Big Hands: Poor Position

By Mark Lasser

There are days at the poker table that can be incredibly boring. You just keep getting dealt bad cards that you know you shouldn’t play.

When I have days like these I pull out my iPod to keep me from doing anything stupid. I mean, let’s face it, you didn’t drive up to the card room, wait 45 minutes for a seat and miss out on seeing Lost or American Idol to sit there folding cards for two hours. The temptation after seeing so many bad cards is to want to play something. Anything.

It also doesn’t help seeing the guy next to you raking in nice posts with 3-4 suited or K-9 off suit. After an hour of mucking, you start thinking, heck, why not play J-9 off suit. If you’re a lose player and do well with those hands, great, but it’s not going to be a long-term winning strategy despite what you see in the short term. The exception to all of this is to change gears in a game where seven to nine people see the flop cheaply. More on that next issue.

This week I want to focus on what to do with big hands. You know that you should muck 7-2 off suit and most of the other weak hands listed above. Now that you’ve been folding the junk, you look down to see AA or KK or AK suited. Do you slow play them? Raise? Limp?

This week I was at a table at the Lodge playing 1-2-100 and it was a slow start. After about two hours, I looked down at AA under the gun. The table had been loose enough that I figured a small raise would get me a few callers and I really hoped one of the two hyper-aggressive players would re-raise from middle position, allowing me to re-raise and isolate one of them. I thought $10 would do the trick. I quietly pushed the chips across the betting line and then watched. Fold, fold, fold, and fold all the way to the small blind. Fold and a fold. The dealer pushed me a whopping $3. Hmm. Not exactly what I was hoping for with Aces.

Did I play it wrong? Probably not. Limping with AA from early position can be deadly, especially if there are a bunch of $2 callers. At that point, any flop could give a player two pair and it would be nearly impossible to read flush and straight calls. The last thing I want in early position is to be chasing backdoor draws. There are two kinds of bad luck; bad beats when you are way ahead and get drawn out on, and small pots when absolutely no one at the table, not even the crazy lose players have anything with which they can challenge even a small raise.

A few hands later in late position I get AK suited and pull in a pot of $20 pre-flop. Grrr. Sure, it’s better than losing with it, but I can’t help but feel there was so much potential lost. Still I stay patient and within half an hour I am dealt KK — again, it’s a big hand under the gun. This time I decide to raise enough to make the pot a bit more attractive. I put out $25 with a little dramatic flourish and get five callers! Yikes. I would have liked one caller and would have loved three. Five callers are not always so good with KK. The mantra “No Ace. No Ace. No Ace” is pulsing through my head. I do not look at the flop. Instead, I study the players. No one is jumping out of his or her seat. When I do look at the flop, I see J-2-7 mixed suits.

The only thing I’m worried about is a player holding JJ. Not wanting to be slow played or drawn out on, I make the max bet of $100 into the pot of about $150. Fold, fold. Then a very good player who’s been a poker dealer in Vegas and currently deals at Ameristar reaches for chips. He grabs $100 to call and another $100 to raise. My first thought cannot be printed in a family newspaper. My second thought is he could have AJ and could make a profitable pot. My third thought is relief as he tells me he’s just joking and folds his hand. The next two players also fold and I take down the pot. I’m much happier.

Could I have played this slower? Sure, but let’s say another of the five players had AJ, QJ, JT, T9 or a pocket pair. Would they have called a $25 bet? Of course they would have, and considering the pot odds, I wouldn’t blame them. If they put me on a made set, they need to fold. A bet of $25 would have given 7:1 odds to the first caller and even better for each additional caller. Then what would I do if an A, Q or T comes? Since I don’t love trying to find tells and reads in low limit poker, I’d just as soon take the pot down fast. With my $100 bet, they’re getting about the right odds for a call if they put me on AA, KK or QQ and don’t need one of those cards to make 2 pair.

I also have a reasonable and sane table image that I’m sure helped. Next issue will look at playing weak hands at lose tables.