When To Fold Pocket Aces Before The Flopby Jonathan Little | Published: Sep 18, 2024 |
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Believe it or not, but there are actually a few situations that come up from time to time where you should fold pocket aces before the flop. I recently posted about this concept on Twitter/X and some people wanted to see the math, so here it is!
Before we get to a few spots where you actually should fold, let’s look at an example that players might incorrectly cite as foldable.
Just because you won’t win the majority of the time, doesn’t mean you should fold A-A preflop. Let’s say that five players go all-in before you with what you expect to be reasonable ranges. Your aces will win 47.6% of the time against five ranges of the top 10% of hands.
Losing 52.4% of the time may not sound too great, but you have to realize that you only have to put in one-sixth (16.67%) of the chips.
If everyone is all-in for 20 big blinds each, the total pot will be 120 big blinds and you own 57.12 of them (120 × .476). You only had to put in 20 of them. So, each time you find yourself in this situation, you profit 57.12 – 20 = 37.12 big blinds.
This situation is incredibly profitable for you, so you should NEVER fold. That is, unless there are some unusual circumstances at play.
The main time you should fold before the flop with A-A is when there are substantial payout implications in a tournament. This occasionally occurs on the bubble of a satellite/survivor tournament where perhaps 1 in 10 players who entered the event get 10 times their initial buy-in, and everyone else gets nothing. There is no benefit to taking first place in the tournament because all in-the-money payouts are the same.
Suppose there are 20 players remaining and 19 get 10x their initial investment. You have 20 big blinds. One other player has 40 big blinds. Everyone else has between 2 big blinds and 6 big blinds. You minraise with A-A and the big stack goes all-in. Everyone folds back around to you. This may seem like a spot to call but remember that it will win only 85.2% of the time against a random hand.
You have to ask yourself how often you will get in the money if you fold, and compare that to how often you get in the money if you call. If you call, you can safely assume you will get in the money every time you win, so you will get in the money 85.2% of the time.
However, if you fold and conserve your 18 big blinds stack, you will get in the money some percentage of the time too. Since there are 20 players remaining and you have roughly 3x average, you will probably get in the money 97% of the time (or more).
So, would you rather get in the money 85.2% of the time or 97% of the time? If you want to get in the money 97% of the time, you should fold A-A. Any time you have a decently large stack on the bubble of a satellite, you have to avoid confrontations with the big stacks at all costs (especially when there are multiple tiny stacks present).
Okay, maybe that situation was too obvious for some veteran poker grinders. But a similar situation can occur in a regular tournament with a big blind ante as well.
Let’s say a min-cash is worth two buy-ins. Unfortunately, you lose an all-in and get down to just one-tenth of a big blind on the bubble of a tournament where 100 people get in the money and 101 remain. The average stack is 25 big blinds.
Everyone folds to you on the button and you have aces. If you go all-in, you will end up with .4 big blinds roughly 75% of the time. 25% of the time you will lose and bubble. So when you win you gain very little, since the equity of .1 big blinds and .4 big blinds are almost equal.
You have to ask yourself how often one of the other 100 players will go broke before you between now and when you have to pay the big blind. In most events, someone else will go broke over the next few hands, meaning you will get in the money perhaps 90% of the time if you fold.
Even if no one goes broke before you have to pay the big blind, you could win that hand and the next one to continue in the tournament and buy yourself another orbit.
When you have a REALLY tiny stack on the bubble of a tournament, most of your equity will come from sneaking into the money, not from trying to spin it up and take first place.
But how about a third situation? One other time you should consider folding A-A is when you think you may be getting cheated. As Len Ashby (@ZENofLEN) pointed out:
“You’re in a rake home game in L.A,” Ashby posted. “You get up to go to the bathroom and as you’re walking back to the table you get told you have a hand. You sit down and the action is open, three-bet, and four-bet to you. You look down at aces. Never under any circumstances play this hand.”
In his hypothetical situation, he presumes he is being set up/cheated and therefore should fold.
Someone replied to his post saying, “I would call and see if I flop an ace.” Well, you might… and you will probably still lose. That said, if you think you are being cheated, you probably should not be in that game in the first place.
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Jonathan Little is a two-time WPT winner and the 2024 PokerGO Cup champion with nearly $9 million million in live tournament earnings, best-selling author of 15 educational poker books, and 2019 GPI Poker Personality of the Year. If you want to increase your poker skills and learn to crush the games, check out his training site at PokerCoaching.com/cardplayer.
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