AA vs. KK 81% to 19% (win percentage)

AA vs. AK 92% to  7%

AA vs. 78s 77% to 23%

AA vs. 72o 88% to 12%

Yes, you are ahead but you will not always win with those aces. The best you can hope for is 9 out out 10 against AK. Play against middle suited connectors and you will lose almost 1/4 of the time. Even the lowly seven deuce offsuit will win 12% of the time when you are loaded up with pocket rockets.

So when you do get those aces (approximately 1 in every 212 hands) what to do?

First, you need to win some chips with those big pairs; don’t scare away the fish by over betting them. On the other hand, all big pairs play better heads up or against at most two opponents. So, you need to make them pay to outdraw your monster aces. Aces don’t come around any more or any less often than any other pair but when they do, it certainly is better to be raking a pot of any size than seeing a big pot pushed the the other guy and your aces going into the muck.

The key to playing pocket aces is how you bet. You want to maximize profit and to do that you often need to minimize opponents in the hand. Good luck and may the flop be with you.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #208

Probably the biggest mistake beginning poker players make is that they play too many hands. When you’re just starting out playing poker, you want to play, folding is no fun. This often means you will stay in hands when you cards just aren’t very good. You want action!

But playing more doesn’t mean winning more, just the opposite is usually the case. What you need to do to fill your time is to work on reading your opponents, that is what you do when you are not in a hand and that will make you a winning player a lot more quickly than playing that Q10 offsuit from under the gun.

Now if you really are an action junkie, what do you do? Well in a live game you can just try out the “maniac” style. Play nearly any hand, raise almost all the flops. You may find you are a naturally uber aggresive player, on the other hand you may just lose and lose. But fear not there is another solution.  Get yourself an online account and play four tables at a time but only at micro-limits. You will nearly always be in a hand with halfway decent cards and you can’t lose a lot of money. Eventually you will get over the need for action and decide to learn to play some good solid poker.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #207

This means that the player may bet those chips even though they are not physically on the table at the start of the hand. It is assumed the other players were paying attention and heard or saw the chip transaction and know that the player has more chips to play that hand. Any disputes will be in favor of the “behind” players increased stack, as long as the other players were made aware of the behind status.

The assumption that players at the table are paying attention to such actions or other floor rulings is always to be assumed. If a player misses such a call and in this case assumes the “behind” player is short stacked, the floor will always support the announcement if it was clearly made to the table. The bottom line is pay attention or potentially lose more than you intended to a player who is “playing behind.”

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #206

Yes, five is the right answer, but to be absolutely correct, the answer should be “usually” five. Because there are times when you can have more than five community cards. This situation is called Running It Twice. In a cash game, never a tournament, when two players get involved in a large pot and one of them is all in, the may agree to run it twice. This means that whatever community cards still remain to flopped, turned or rivered; they will be put out twice. So if the “run twice” is agree to after the flop, then a turn and river are put out and then another turn and another river. The players are in effect playing two hands. If one player wins both, they win all the pot. If the players each win a hand, the pot is split.

This really is just a form of insurance when players get involved in a big pot. Not all poker rooms allow players to run it twice and some only allow it in their high limit games, so check with the floor or the dealer, if you want to run it twice.

If you want to discuss this interesting poker idea, head over to the online poker forum

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #205

But we often hear about a professional poker player making a Big Laydown. Of course, there are the television ads where the pro easily tossess away pocket kings when an ace comes on the flop. “You gotta lay’em down when you are beat.” Or so we are told.

The key skill in making the Big Laydown is an overall complete poker game. It is one thing to lay down a big overpair on an “all small” flop but the reasons why you make the laydown is what is key for a beginning player. A good read or a tell on your opponent will often give you the information you need to get away from a second best hand. And that is the key to any good Big Laydown, you are willing to muck a good, even a very good hand because you know you are second best this time. Sometimes you will be wrong, sometimes you will get bluffed, but if you never make a Big Laydown, you will never win the big event. Sometimes knowing when you are the loser is more important then knowing you are the winner.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #203

We all know that when we miss the flop with our garbage hand played out of the big blind into an unraised pot that when another player bets, we can just fold and move on to the next hand. Sure sometimes you might want to try a bluff or a longshot draw but usually we just fold and move on. We lay down our hand.

But there is a lot more to making a laydown in many circumstances. Take for instance when the flop comes AJ2 and you were playing J2, again from the big blind in an unraised pot. You just got very lucky! Or did you? You check with your bottom two pair, hoping to trap another player holding an ace. Sure enough some one bets and you decide not to let them draw out on you so you reraise. Here is how it goes.

You: J2

Flop: AJ2

You check and into a 150 pot, your opponent bets 100. You raise to 400.

So far, so good. But now your opponent makes it 1,000! What?

Can he have: AA or AJ or JJ or A2 or 22? Or AK, AQ and be drawing to beat you or KK or QQ and again drawing to beat you. Is there a flush draw out there?

Here is the question, is the big reraise worth calling or should you just cut your losses with this garbage hand (J2) and get out of the way? Should you make the laydown? Certainly it depends on a lot of other factors we have not considered, like your read on this opponent. The point is that making a good laydown can save you a lot of chips. A laydown is not a surrender, it is surviving to play another hand.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #204

Take this example: blinds are 1,000/2,000 with a 200 ante. If your stack is 10,000 and you move all in, your opponents will definitely think before making the call. If you stack is less than 4,000 they will not. The value in the prize pool to eliminate a player is too high not to call a very short stack. When you make your short stack move is up to you, but the point is that this decision should be based more on the stack and less on the cards. An all in move of 10,000 with 72o is a better move than going all in with AJ and only 3,200. The huge added value of your opponents folding has to be considered.

Getting super short stacked can happen because you lose a pot or because you let yourself get blinded down by being too conservative. At a final table the odds are immensely higher that moving in early with a reasonable stack will succeed over waiting for a monster hand and folding away the blinds while waiting. Short stack play at a final table often determines who wins and who loses but more often who places higher in the money list. Don’t get blinded off is nearly a cardinal rule of final table play. Pick your spot and make your move!

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #202

Online Tip #1: Take notes.

Yes you do have to pay attention to every hand, which means you can’t watch TV or read email while you are playing poker. When you see a player make a certain move, put it in your notes. All of the major sites have note taking options. Just click on a player and open the notes section.

Don’t write: “This player is a donkey!” that is not going to help you. But if the notes says: “Cannot lay down top pair, will call to the river.” Now that is both helpful and potentially profitable. The notes don’t have to be extensive but they should be specific. Trust us, the first time you make a big call and take down a monster pot because of a quick note you wrote two months ago, you will understand how much note taking can help your online game.

By the way, just the practice of watching every hand and looking for a note to take will also help your live game. It is not just about writing down the note but also about getting better and better at seeing the tendencies in your opponents that are worth remembering.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #201

I want to say a bit about the TDA here. They and their rules are to be considered a work in progress. They as a group meet periodically to review their current rules and how those rules have worked and not worked over a period of time. They then debate potential new rules and modify the existing rules. Rule #31 is an example of a rule in process.

The idea is that you may not show a card before the hand is complete, the intention is to not influence the other player or players in the hand nor to get a read on a player when they see your card or cards. Many professional players believe that when there is only one player remaining to act that exposing a card is not in any way a violation of the rules of poker and, in fact, is often a good play. But as it stands now, if you expose a card while a hand is in play you MAY be given a penalty after the hand is over. You probably will at least be warned by the floor staff not to expose a card in the future.

Note that your hand is not dead and this is perhaps the most important part of the rule. Hands should not be killed while in play under any but the most dire of circumstances and exposing a card is not and never should be such a circumstance. Your hand plays up or down as long as you  don’t toss it into the muck or pull it out of your sleeve.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #200

Poker is a game of skill. Don’t believe anyone who says poker is a game of luck, but do let them sit at your table because they are not skilled at poker. Now, this is not to say that sometimes you don’t get lucky and win a hand, it happens. Sometimes you are playing for a straight and the board gives you a winning two pair. We call this back-dooring the hand or just a backdoor.

Backdoor simply means that a player makes a hand he didn’t originally intend to make, usually they get it on the river. For example, if the final two cards on the board are hearts and you make a flush, you backdoored a flush. You have a medium pair say 9 of hearts and 9 of clubs. The flop is QJ2 with two heart. Two overcards, so you check and your opponent checks behind you. The turn is the ace of hearts, now there are three hearts on the board and three overcards; you both check again. The river is the 7 of hearts. Your pair has gone nowhere and when you both check again. Surprise, your nine of hearts makes the higher flush and you win with the backdoor flush.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you play well. Sometimes you get lucky and backdoor a winning hand.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #199