I'm really getting sick of opening with these early and then getting 3 bet, or 3 betting them late and getting called and an Ace flops. I play fullring cash at the micros, and I keep getting intro trouble with QA and JA. Very regularly ends up as a second best hand.

Do you have any recommendations for dealing with these awful hands at the beginner level/

why are they awful? would you rather have AT? If you get called would you rather an A not flop?

I know what to do with At and when. QA and JA are harder because if you play them early and get 3 bet; then what? OOP and a board that hits an Ace. What do you do?
Or even Late and you 3 bet a UTG open, get called and the Board Aces: What worse are you going to get down that board betting for value?

you see my point though?

do you see mine?

Yeah, obviously I see that they're good in certain spots because they're an A and boardwalk which is obviously crushing ranges preflop; my point is when you're facing 3 bets or opponents who might be tigher and aren't letting goonce you're on an A dry flop; in that situation when you could be heads up against AK or better, what do you do then?

I don't think you do...

You say "you know what to do with AT" do you really? you get into the same situations when you get 3bet or flop an A. Do you mean you know how to play it profitably? If that's not your definition of knowing what to do, then 72o must be the best hand because you always know what to do with it right?

If not, then whenever you have AJ or AQ, then pretend you have AT so you at least know how to play it profitably. Then go from there...

you're saying that if I can make decisions with any Ace, I should be able to make decisions with them too; it's not different, and if I'm losing money on them I'm just playing them wrong; in this case probably in too inequitable spots that would be a
'no brainer' with any other sword except Ajq.
So your solution is to basically just play it the same way as the Ax until I can better place it.

Obviously AQ is better than A3. However you're implying that you rather not have strong hands, so I'm just trying to get you to realise that stronger hands wins more money

Understand the concept of range. Let's take AQo

You are utg and raise 3x

a. The nit in the CO 3bets you with stats of 12/10/2.5 over a decent sample.

b. The loose maniac in the CO 3bets you with stats of 44/28/18.1 over a decent sample

Against the nit you are crushed and oop - easy fold (you have 32% versus his range)

Against the maniac you are in much better shape (you have 58% equity versus his range) so you probably want to continue. Whether you call oop and play poker, or 4bet depends on villain tendencies.

Hope this points you in the right direction. I've assumed 100bb effective stack and heads up post flop.

If you open AQo in EP and get 3-bet by someone who has position on you, and he's not a maniac, just fold.
If you open AQ in EP and get flatted by someone who has position on you, check almost every flop that doesn't give you two pairs or better. AQ/AJ tend to make good bluff-catching hands. They aren't ideal for betting with OOP unless you have something close to the nuts. In other words, they play almost identically to ATo , but tend to make more money because they make better one pair/two pair hands.
The problem isn't really that AQ/AJ are terrible hands. It's that most micro players are terrible at playing OOP and are generally incapable of checking with top pair. :/

Save AJ for LP.



Limp and 4 bet the 3 bettor hope to take it down right there, if they 5 bet or shove, fold. It'll save you a stack or 2 if you're getting it in with AQ/J vs AA/AK quite a lot.



You'll run AQ into AA and AK plenty, but you'll also run it into weaker aces plenty.

wtf?

I limp hands I'd 3 bet with from EP so I can 4 bet a 3 bettor occasionally. Nothing worse than opening 3 x BB from UTG in a full ring game and everyone folding. People love to punish da limpaz.

First of all, your terminology is off.

If you limp, then the only way you can 4 bet is if not one but TWO people raise the bet pre-flop. The BB is bet 1, the first raiser is bet 2, the 2nd raiser is bet 3, and your bet would then be a 4 bet.

So I believe you mean limp then 3-bet. Because if you 4-bet with AQ in EP you deserve what happens next.

Secondly - all you do by limp - reraising is overplay AQ while putting even more chips at risk with what is a decent but ultimately drawing hand pre. AQ is behind every pair AND AK, and unless you're at a very laggy table, the range you'll be deliberately 3-betting here consists mostly of pairs and strong(ish) aces.

grunching
OP,

have you filtered your hud on AJ and/or AQ and looked if you are really loosing money with it? Then dissect that in positions, and see how are the results on AJ/AQ depending on position. May be that will give you a clue how to play them.

I'm gonna disagree *slightly* on this, if you get flatted pre by a non-maniac then I find that any Q or K or A on the board merits a C-bet because a lot of the flat callers are going to be small/mid pair callers, so I find that about 65% of the time as long as there's a reasonably high card on the flop I can rep it as a bluff.

But with one pair, then if I get called otf I'm check calling the turn or river, but probably not both.

Thanks.

Any hand that has you completely crushed is going over the top so you can fold out. Most small pocket pairs and suited connectors are folding pre/if they miss the flop. Lets forget about the times you hit a queen or ace up against some lower. You're generally going to get heads up doing this so playing AQ oop 1 v 1 isn't as bad as you're making out.



The guy asked for ways to play AQ/AJ from early position, this is a way that makes money for me. If I couldn't play AQ oop at the micros id probably stop playing.

downswinger,

This is BQ, where lots of people come for advice on how to learn the basics/ABC poker and then perhaps take it to the next level.

Your advice is at best FPS (fancy play syndrome) and at worst fish spew.

Let's deconstruct your last statement

From a mental game perspective this is pure ego. From a maths perspective it is pure b/cr@p.

Playing OOP is harder and less EV than playing IP. That's like poker 101. Your implying that basic fundamental does not apply you.

AQ is a good hand against a weak range, and poor hand against a strong range. That's like poker 102. Your implying that AQ in your hands is the nuts.

Take a chill pill (cut the ego), read a NLHE primer and quit the FPS. Start building your game on sound principles and become a better player.

Or not...nobody round here will give a ****, but they are gonna call you out, because noobs will read your stuff and possibly think it has value.

Which it absolutely does not.

You're the worst

For everyone who is in the dark on this subject; downswinger has really bad advice.

For OP: 3betting an early open with AJ/AQ probably isn't the best idea because against most people you can't really do it for value and it's too strong of a hand to really bluff with. Most of the time people aren't opening and calling a 3bet with AT so yes on A high flops you either get no value or are beat.

AJ and especially AQ plays really well as a call in position.

Going back to the OP, there's more to the story than you are telling us. Forget about raising in EP and getting 3bet by a tight player. You just fold these oop.

As for having the second best hand, my guess is the reason you know you have the second best hand is that you're getting to show down with them. You can check for yourself, but when I was playing in the micros, the median winning hand at show down was two pair. If you getting to show down with a single pair and medium kicker, you have a below average hand. You should expect to lose much of the time with that hand. The other correlation is the bigger the pot at show down, the better the hand you need to win it on average. If you are firing all three streets with a single pair, the person calling needs to think they have a decent hand, too, to call you. They're not likely to be thinking that TP ten kicker is going to be good often after three streets of betting.

It of course depends on the strength of the competition, but if the villains aren't completely awful, a top pair type of hand is going to get called on one, maybe two streets only and still be good. Extracting that value without narrowing the villain's range to only hands that beat you is the art of poker. It can't be summarized in a post.

OP, lots of good advice ITT. Not sure if it's already been said but you can just fold AJo in full ring in the first 3 positions.

Yeah lots of awesome advice!

So I'm basically just going to not play these EP at all any more and be wary on who is behind me MP+. That idea of calling in position with AQ/AJ sounds cool. Button, cut off and blinds would be a good spot for it, yeah? I'm thinking (tell me if I'm wrong) from that point, if A hits the board they're right to continue firing at you with worse Aces;