When you 4bet against an aggressive opponent and he 5-betjamms, what hands should you call in what position? For example in $0,02/$0,05 NLHE zoom (6-max) 100BBs effective:-You raise the button with JJ to $0,15-Aggresive player in SB 3bets to $0,50 -You 4bet to $1,25 - SB jamms $5,00. Do you still call it off in this spot, or do you 4bet-fold? The weakest hands in this range (55 and 66) should be folded from early position in a full ring game. Low Pocket Pairs – 22 through 44 are hands that should not be played as a raise first in from the early positions, but become profitable when played from the later positions.
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In a prior installment on Badeucey, we established a set of guidelines for the starting hands we should tend to play given that we were the first player to enter the pot. In this issue, the focus will be on what hands are playable when the pot has already been opened, and the factors that should be considered in order to determine if our holding is better played as a smooth-call or as a three-bet.
Pat Hands
Whenever you hold a playable pat hand, it is almost always in your best interest to reraise the opener and try to get the pot heads-up. A seven low with at a good three card underneath such as 2 3 5 6 7 increases the odds of scooping against a single opponent.
Some caution needs to be exercised with eight lows such as 2 5 6 7 8 and 3 45 6 8 where we essentially have no badugi hand. If we are up against an early position raiser, both of these hands should probably hit the muck.
This advice may seem overly tight, particularly with 3 4 5 6 8, however a solid player opening from early position will often either have a badugi or a very strong three-card badugi that they mostly plan to showdown unimproved. If our opponent is intent on going to the end regardless what happens in the hand, we are getting freerolled from the beginning.
The situation is different when the initial raiser originates from the cutoff or later position as this range will be weaker and not as showdown bound. In that circumstance, we should three-bet 3 4 5 6 8 in the hope that the pot is played heads-up and our opponent chooses to fold sometime before showdown.
One-Card Draws
Any made badugi that is an eight or lower should be reraised for both value and protection. If the raise comes from a steal position, reraising a rougher nine badugi such as 4 6 7 9 is also correct especially if they are loose and often drawing three. Since the underlying draw of 4 6 7 draw is quite rough, keeping the nine is probably best.
Holdings such as 2 5 6 9 can go either way. In straight Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw we would always draw two in order to try and make stronger lows and any other nine we catch later on in the hand will help us in the same manner. However, in Badeucey discarding the 9 is forever eliminating one of our better badugi outs.
Therefore, with a hand like 2 5 6 9, we should tend to reraise and be flexible with our drawing decision depending on the remainder of the preflop action. If our reraise is successful in getting the pot heads-up we should probably keep the nine and draw one, and if it goes off multi-way we should opt to draw two.
When you hold very good one-card draws with a tri such as 2 3 5 7 or 2 3 4 8 where you plan to draw one, you also want to three-bet in the hopes of isolating your opponent. Even if we bump into a badugi, with premium draws to both sides your equity and playability is often quite good. In addition, we don’t want our reraising and drawing one range to be entirely comprised of badugis.
Three-Card Badugis (i.e. Two-Card Draws)
Poker Hands To Always Fold
With three-card badugis, the decision between three-betting or just smooth-calling is often close. When making it we should take into account the opener’s position, your position, your hand, and the skill level of the players left to act behind you. For example, facing a somewhat tight early position opener with weak players in the blinds, flatting your entire three-card badugi range has merit in order to invite action players to enter the pot.
However, in most other situations it is usually best to reraise premium three-card badugis such as 2-3-5, 2-4-5, 3-4-5, 2-4-6, 2-3-7, and 2-4-7. There’s a value component to three-betting these hands in addition to increasing our scooping chances. In addition, as we discussed last issue, these hands effectively realize their equity relative to our opponent.
In particular, 3-4-5 gains tremendously getting the pot heads-up as it can win the badugi side unimproved, but can struggle to make strong lows due to potential straight draws. Hands such as 2-3-7 and 2-4-7 will not often win the badugi side unimproved, however, these holdings have strong two-way potential and three-betting them helps balance against doing so with only the lowest of our tri holdings.
Weaker three-card badugis should mostly be flatted and which hands are playable are a function of your opponent’s playing style, the position from which he opened, and your position. For example, if a tight player opens from first position and we are one seat over in the hijack we should fold a mediocre hand like 2-6-8.
While position helps, it’s hard to envision that our opponent is opening many worse hands thus we should not seek out an uphill battle with so many players left to act behind us. In this situation, the bottom of our continuing range would probably be holdings such as 3-4-6 and 2-4-8. These hands make stronger badugis than 2-6-8 and also have the potential to reduce our incomplete to a three-card four.
Blind Defense
From the big blind you are getting good odds to continue against a single raise, however, it is difficult to defend profitably with as many hands as you can in another game such as Omaha eight-or-better. In Omaha hi-lo, you can take a flop with a somewhat junky hand and have a villain’s A A 2 3 drawing nearly dead once those three cards come down. However, in Badeucey your rough draws will only make rough hands, thus when you are up against the very top of your opponent’s range no miracle can save you.
When an opponent opens from early position, we must respect that range and play somewhat tight. While we can probably defend with any three-card seven or a smooth eight we must resist the temptation to play rougher holdings such as 3 7 8 that have reverse implied odds.
Cutoff and button opens are weaker, thus given the pot odds we can mostly defend any holding that we would have opened from those positions had the situation been reversed. For example, we can defend un-suited 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, and 2-7 holdings as well as a two-suited hand such as 2 3 7. Three-card badugis such as 5-6-8 and 3-7-8 are borderline plays; calling a button raise is fine but it is probably best to fold them against a cutoff open.
It may not seem like we are defending a lot of hands but the responsibility is also borne by the small blind to ensure that an over aggressive late position opener will not automatically profit. Against a very loose raiser the best response is to punish them with more three-bets with your good hands as opposed to loosening up your calling standards significantly. In addition, someone playing too many hands from late position will often get punished later on in the hand as they are usually playing rough draws with reverse implied odds.
In Badeucey, getting too far out of line before the first draw will often cost you money in the later rounds. A solid foundation of starting holdings is required to successfully navigate the later streets. ♠
Kevin Haney is a former actuary of MetLife but left the corporate job to focus on his passions for poker and fitness. He is co-owner of Elite Fitness Club in Oceanport, NJ and is a certified personal trainer. With regards to poker he got his start way back in 2003 and particularly enjoys taking new players interested in mixed games under his wing and quickly making them proficient in all variants. His new mixed-games website Counting Outs is a great starting resource for a plethora of games ranging from the traditional to the exotic. He can be reached at haneyk612@gmail.com.
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Pocket Rockets, American Airlines, Bullets, whatever you want to call pocket aces, you will be delighted to look at your hole cards and see two big “A” staring right back at you. They are the strongest starting hand in Texas Hold’em by a long margin which can lead to you winning a substantial pot. If they are so powerful, should you ever fold aces preflop?
You will be dealt a pair of aces in the hole while playing Texas Hold’em a mere 4.5 percent of the time, or approximately once in 221 hands. When your starting hand is eventually pocket aces, you are almost certainly thinking about how many chips you are going to win during this hand. It is likely you are sat hoping for a raise and even a re-raise before you, aces are that strong. Yet there a situation where you should consider send those aces into the muck before a flop is dealt!
Pocket aces math
Let us take a look at some math before we explain this quite common scenario. A pair of aces have approximately 85.2 percent equity against a completely random hand, which is huge, but it also means that even against a random holding, aces will lose one in five all-in confrontations. How many of you reading this have backed a horse or placed a wager at longer odds than +500?
Poker Hands You Should Fold Napkin
Most poker players will not be moving all-in preflop with a totally random hand, they will have a legitimate hand of some sort. Aces perform well against all other holdings. They have a shade under 82 percent equity against a pair of kings, a huge 93 percent equity against an unsuited ace-king, and against a range of hands such as TT+, AQs+ and AKo, aces will prevail 83.2 percent of the time.
Aces in cash games
You should never fold aces preflop in a cash game. Cash games are all about taking advantage of the smallest edges because if you can simply buy back in and potentially win your chips back if you go bust, so long as you have the bankroll for it that is. Even if you have a pair of deuces in the hole and your opponent moves all in and accidentality reveals ace-king or ace-king suited, you should al as you have 52 percent equity in the hand and not many poker players have the skill to continually give up two-percent edges on a regular basis.
Even if you are seated at a six-handed no limit Hold’em cash game online at PokerStars and five of your opponents go all in and all of them say they have a pair of some sort, you still have almost 37.5 percent equity with your aces and the pot odds will dictate a call from you.
Tournament poker and aces
Tournament poker, however, is a different beast entirely. While there is a need to accumulate chips, there is also an element of survival, especially in freezeout tournaments where you cannot rejoin the event once you have lost your starting stack.
It is often correct, in poker tournaments, to turn down a small edge if you believe it will prolong your tournament life and allow you to commit your chips with a greater edge at a different time. There will not be many situations you can apply this to in a major tournament such as the World Series of Poker Main Event but imagine on the first hand three of your opponents go all in and say they have a least a pair of queens each, you have around 54.5 percent equity. Winning all three stacks here would be great in the short term, but there are hundreds of millions of chips in play so this situation actually does not massively increase your chances of finishing first, but you will bust from the tournament on essentially a coinflip. Plus, how likely is this going to happen in reality?
Folding aces preflop
The situation where you could consider fold pocket aces preflop is in a satellite tournament. Satellites pay a set number of players a ticket, seat or package to a higher buy-in tournament. You may recall Chris Moneymaker famously turned an $86 satellite entry at PokerStars into the $2.5 million World Series of Poker Main Event top prize in 2003.
In a satellite that has say 10 tickets in the prize pool, it does not matter if you finish first or 10th, the prizes are the same. Now imagine if there were 11 or 12 players remaining in this 10-seat satellite and you are in the middle of the pack in terms of chips, almost guaranteed a seat. Now an opponent, who has a larger stack, moves all in and you have aces. If you call, you win the hand around 82 percent of the time and almost certainly win a seat, but the other 18 percent of the time you bust and go home empty-handed. Folding aces preflop in this exact situation also essentially guarantees you a seat with no risk of being eliminated.
Poker Hands You Should Fold Away
It is quite rare that you should find the need to consider folding pocket aces preflop in Texas Hold’em, but as you can see, these scenarios do occasionally crop up.