Talkin' poker on the way to the Tech Center

By Mark Lasser

I recently had Kevin Boudreau on my radio show and we drove down to the station in the Denver Tech Center together. It gave us a chance to talk about some poker scenarios before he took off for a nice, month-long vacation. I knew he’d been playing a ton of poker, often 12 to 18 simultaneous games on Poker Stars. If you want to quietly observe his play, look him up on Poker Stars. He plays as Phwap.

One of the things we discussed is how players, myself included, overvalue starting hands. When we look down and see pocket Aces and five people in the pot ahead of us, we start to mentally take ownership of the pot. But the truth is, few hands dominate much before a flop.

For example, if you’re dealt AA against similarly suited KK, you’re only about a 4.8:1 favorite. If a King flops, you’re now almost a 10.6:1 dog, which is very problematic if you choose not to believe the continuation bet by the holder of the KK. That’s exactly what got me knocked out of a recent tournament in the sixth hand. I didn’t know much about the other player and figured he’d make a continuation bet on a K59 unsuited flop with AK to even QQ and JJ. I managed to get all-in on the flop and didn’t catch my 2 outer.

What if there are a bunch of folks in the pot? How does AdAh stand up against four players with another pair (9h9c), two suited connectors (JcTc and 5d6d) and unsuited Broadway cards (KdQs)? Well, the AA is still the favorite to win but it’s also more likely to lose. What? Well, the Aces will win this hand about 40 percent of the time, which bests all the other hands. But it’s still going to lose three out of every five times it’s played in this scenario. The other players have great implied odds if the holder of the Aces falls in love with them and lays them down post flop. What order do you put the other hands in? No cheating…. (Answer at the bottom of the column).

Now let’s look at the extremes. An AdAh against a 7c2s off suit. You might think the incredible AA would by far dominate the worst hand in poker, but it’s actually not as far ahead as players think it is. In this case the AA pre-flop is still only a 7:1 favorite, but folks play it as if it’s bullet proof. While being almost an 7:1 favorite is great, and it is highly unlikely the 7-2 off suit is getting correct pot odds, there’s still a decent amount of statistical variability in this matchup.

Not only can the 7-2 win a bunch of times in a row, the implied odds are huge, as no one playing a raised AA is going to suspect they’re in trouble if the flop comes with a 7-2 or a 7-7 or a 2-2, and the chances of paying off a lot more than 7:1 firmly exists. Besides, you’re more likely to be up against something stronger than 7-2. Like a J-T suited, which makes you only a 3.6:1 favorite.

And what of our beloved AK big slicks? How much stronger is AK suited over 8-9 suited connector? Did you guess only about a 1.6:1 favorite? What if we change the suited connector to a 7-2 off suit? Now we become a 2.3:1 favorite. Not all that different. But think about how fast you’ve seen someone shove with AK in an early round of a tournament and get snapped off by a ridiculous call of a maniac or a drunk guy on tilt who’s paying more attention to the ballgame than the action at the table.

Of course, I’m not advocating calling down a suspected AK with a 7-2 off, but I will say an 8 bet or a shove with AK in early position early in a tournament has a lot more to lose than it does to gain. If you do get called by an AA or a KK you’re now respectively a 7.6:1 or a 2:1 dog, and if the wacko with 7-2 off does call, you’re ahead, but you’ll still lose about 30 percent of the time.

So with all this said, I think it makes the case for playing small ball and trying to control the pot size pre-flop. Not to say that’s going to happen with the hyper aggressive players that often dominate the tables. I’m inclined to let them donk off chips when they shouldn’t and to slam them back with power hands. Once the filed gets to middle stages, the game is often a little more controllable as players now have time equity invested in the game. It’s one thing to lose after five minutes. It’s another to lose after playing five or six hours.

Answer: The best hands after the Aces are, in order, 5d6d (18.6%), JcTc (16.7%), 9h9c (13.6%) and KdQs (10.4%).

Mark B. Lasser is Denver writer and international poker player. He regularly plays in Colorado, Arizona, California, Missouri and Nevada. You can hear him talk about gambling and casinos every Friday at 5 p.m. on KEZW AM 1430. Readers can send questions and comments to him at ColoradoPokerMark@comcast.net.