You might think a COTW on playing AA is silly. Everyone makes money with them, so what’s to think about? I think it actually might be one of the most valuable and overlooked parts of people’s games, and hope to convince you of this in the introduction.
Cliffnotes: There aren’t any. It’s a tl;dr (too long, didn’t read) post. Sorry. It has to be among the longest COTWs written. But, I hope to convince you in the introduction that it’s worth spending the time looking at, even if you have to break it up over a few days.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction – Here, I Hope to Convince You to Read the Rest of This Post
2. My Intention for This COTW
3. AA Might Not Be as Strong as You Think It Is
4. Slowplaying
5. Preflop – Goals
6. Preflop – Achieve a Favorable SPR (Stack-to-Pot Ratio)
7. Preflop – Limit How Many Hands See the Flop
8. Preflop – When Raised, Think About the Situation
9. Preflop – Don’t Give Your Hand Away (Open Limping)
10. Preflop – Don’t Give Your Hand Away (Open Shoving/Massive Over-Shoving)
11. Postflop – Protect Your Stack
12. Postflop – Slow Down. Think About Villain’s Range, What Beats You, and What Do You Beat That Continues
13. Postflop – Baluga Theorem and River Extension
14. Postflop – Betting, Sizing, and Timing
15. Deep Stacks
16. Why Do I Only Win Small Pots With AA?
1. Introduction – Here, I Hope to Convince You to Read the Rest of This Post
I really appreciate the opportunity to write a COTW. I’ve played over one million hands online now, but am a fairly new poster on 2+2. After an initial rough start in 2000, I’ve been a winning online player, but have taken long breaks of playing, and haven’t been as successful as many of the expert posters here.
Many players think playing AA is easy. You’re probably one of them. I think it actually might be one of the hardest hands to play well. 27o is the easiest hand to play; you just fold. Yes, AA is probably your most profitable hand, even if you think you’re unlucky and lose money with them.
So, if it’s your most profitable hand, how can it also be one of the hardest hands to play well? To show why, I’ll borrow an idea from Tommy Angelo. His theory of reciprocality is that profit in poker ultimately comes from the difference in how different players play the same situation. We all get the same situations, and we’re battling to play those situations more profitable than our opponents, to overcome the rake and earn a profit. Makes sense.
AA should be everyone’s most profitable hand, with a decent sample size. Angelo’s reciprocality theory tells us that you’re only truly profiting with AA if you’re profiting more when them than your opponents are. Let that sink in for a minute – if you’re making a ton of money with AA, but your opponents are making more, than you’re actually losing with AA!
Try something; it will just take a minute. Pull up PokerTracker or Hold’em Manager, and filter all holecards EXCEPT for AA. (If you don’t have one of these programs, get one!) Many readers will find they’re basically breaking even without AA; that they’re treading water fighting the blinds, just waiting for their next AA. This tells us that our winrate with AA has a bigger impact on our overall winrate than we may have previously thought.
Consider something else. On average, you get AA once every 221 hands. Let’s say you aren’t doing very well with AA, and lose 15% of the time you’re dealt them. So on average, you’ll get AA cracked around once every 1473 hands. Those loses are probably fairly large pots, let’s just assume 60bb. If you could just trim 15bb off of this loss of 60bb, that’s 15bb/1473 hands. WOW, that’s basically an entire 1bb/100 to your winrate, if you could fold AA when you’re beat, or keep the pot smaller when you’re beat. Now also think about the times you don’t extract maximum value with AA. If you could earn an additional 15bb on a single of those times you win with AA in the same block of 1473 hands, that’s another 1bb/100 to your winrate.
OK, with this point of view, hopefully you see now that AA might not be as easy to play as you thought. In fact, it may be one of the most important hands to be able to play well, and one of the hardest.
2. My Intention for This COTW
I’ll discuss a few hands in general, but I’m not going to include a bunch of hand histories. I’m not going to try to focus on particular scenarios. There’s just too many. Rather, I am trying to share considerations I think you should think about to make your own decisions. Yes, many of these considerations conflict with each other. That’s what makes playing AA, and poker in general, tricky.
3. AA Might Not Be as Strong as You Think It Is
Preflop, of course you have the strongest hand.
Postflop with AA, you’re going to usually be trying to win a big pot with a mediocre hand. Most of the time, you’re just going to have a pair. The best overpair, of course, but still only a pair.
Your straight up hand value (pair/two pair/etc) by itself doesn’t mean much in Hold’Em. What matters is how well you connect with the board, because everyone’s sharing those community cards. It’s easier to win a big pot when you connect well with the board. The problem is with AA, you rarely connect with the board, and are effectively drawing to two outs! You just aren’t going to improve your hand that often. Many other hands can connect really well to the board, and if they don’t, they’ll often be thrown into the muck.
You can’t have two pair that you connect with. The only way you get two pair is if the board pairs. If this happens, it doesn’t exactly help your hand, because villain has at least the second pair as well. Sure, it counterfeits lower two pairs, but it doesn’t really add value to your hand. And, almost everyone will notice if the board pairs. Some won’t respond well to it, but they should notice.
You can hit a set, but you’re only going to do so approximately once every 8.5 times. An ace hitting the board tends to slow people down, and there’s only one more ace in the deck for villain to have. You aren’t going to extract a lot of value unless villain is stubborn, bluffing, has a lower set, or you get a full house beating a lower full house, flush, or straight. My winrate with AA is double when hitting a set on the flop, compared to when I don’t, which sounds great – until I consider that my winrate with KK is six times as much when hitting a set on the flop, compared to when I don’t.
You can hit a straight or a flush, but that requires the board to have the other four pieces of the puzzle, which screams straight or flush. You won’t make as much on these hands as when you are using both your hole cards to make a straight or flush.
You can hit a full house or quads, but that’s more rare, and again you’ll make more money (at least with a full house) but it won’t be as great as you’d like. I make 4.2 times as much when I have a full house with AA compared to when I don’t, but I make 15.4 times as much when I have a full house with KK compared to when I don’t.
Yes, you’re going to win lots of big pots with AA, but most of the time you’re going to have to do it with just an overpair.
Remember almost all of the time you lose a big pot with AA is going to be also when you just have an overpair.
4. Slowplaying
A lot of players get into a lot of trouble for slowplaying AA. They have probably seen someone slowplaying AA on TV, and it seemed to work out. That’s a different situation. That person is playing in a tournament, in the final stage, where it’s super aggressive with high blinds that are continuing to increase.
When people slowplay AA in a cash game, I think it’s often because they’re emotionally attached to them rather than thinking it’s good strategy. You’re only expected to get them once every 221 hands. When you finally get them, you feel like you’re owed a big pot, and you don’t want to just pick up the blinds. In a cash game with good stack sizes, AA isn’t a hand to slowplay. It just isn’t strong enough, because it’s very easy for people to catch up and pass you, without you knowing it.
Isn’t it better to pick up the blinds, than let 65s stack you?
Or to take down a small pot on the flop, when there’s lots of possible draws, rather than letting draws see a cheap turn?
If you slowplay, to be very comfortable, you need to get something good, like hitting a set.
5. Preflop – Goals
Preflop is where many important mistakes are made with AA, because preflop mistakes compound into larger mistakes postflop. Your actions with AA preflop should be to achieve three goals; setting yourself up to extract as much as possible; setting yourself up for a good postflop situation; and protecting your stack of chips.
You want to set yourself up to extract as much as possible in the hand, which doesn’t necessarily mean getting the most money in preflop that you can. Being overly aggressive preflop will lower your winrate with AA.
At the same time, you need to set yourself up for a good postflop situation. You don’t want to let draw hands and small pocket pairs in cheaply, and you don’t want to have a lot of opponents postflop.
The most important thing is to protect your stack of chips. It’s much better to win a smaller pot than you could have, than losing your stack. It’s also better to occasionally fold when you were ahead, taking a small loss, than exposing your entire stack in a bad situation.
6. Preflop – Achieve a Favorable SPR (Stack-to-Pot Ratio)
What is SPR?
SPR (Stack-to-Pot Ratio) is an idea put forth in Professional No Limit Hold ‘em: Volume I, by Flynn, Metha, and Miller. It is calculated once per hand, when preflop action is complete. It’s simply the ratio of how much additional money can go into the pot, to how much money is in the pot when preflop action is complete. You don’t need to calculate the exact value, just knowing its approximate value goes a long way. Remember how much additional money can go into the pot is the smaller of your stack size or your opponent’s. You have a different SPR with each player, although if you’re lucky, each player will have a similar stack size.
SPR is a very useful indicator of pot geometry. It tells us how much the pot has to grow to be all in. This lets us know how comfortable we are with the pot growing, based upon the hand strength we have. You can also think of it as a measurement of risk-to-reward. When single pair hands are all in at showdown, they win much more often with lower SPRs. For a high SPR pot to develop into an all in pot, that means the players were being very aggressive postflop about getting money in, and this often indicates a single pair is no good, even if it’s the best overpair. Would you rather wind up getting all in with just an overpair if the pot when the flop is dealt is $5, and there’s $22 left behind – or if the pot when the flop is dealt is $1, and there’s $24.50 left behind? (Answer is the first option, if you don’t see why, you’ll benefit by looking into SPR a lot more.)
Small, Medium, and Large SPRs
With a smaller SPR (6 or less), you can be more comfortable with a larger pot, or getting all in with AA. If the SPR is 4 (like $5.50 in a pot on flop with $22.25 stacks), AA is generally in pretty good shape. Small pairs don’t hit sets often, and when they do, the pot can’t get big enough after the flop to really pay them off. Same with flush and straight draws.
With a medium SPR (7-16), this is where things are very tricky, and the hands hardest to play. This is where you will find most of your situations where by the time you think you might be beat, you feel the pot’s probably too big to fold, in case you’re wrong. If the SPR is 12 (like $2 in a pot on flop with $24 stacks), AA is vulnerable, and you’re setting yourself up for some very difficult situations. Here, for example, if you’re out of position and you bet 2/3 pot on every street, and villain calls the flop and turn, villain will face calling around $7.25 to a $18.15 pot. If they re-raise all in on the turn, or open shove all in on the river, you’re facing calling around $12.30 to a $37.70 pot. You’re getting 3:1 on your call, and often don’t have enough information to know if you’re good, so you get to make a tough decision. Did he hit the flush? The weird straight possibility? Was he slowplaying a set? Does he think his overpair of KK is good? Did he river his kicker, giving him two pair? Ah, screw it, it’s 3:1, call. Darn, he did have the flush.
With a larger SPR (17 or more), you need to be more cautious with a larger pot or getting all in with AA. If the SPR is 24 (like $1 in a pot with $24 stacks), AA is very vulnerable. When small pairs hit their sets, there’s plenty of room for the pot to grow after the flop to pay off their draw. With flush and straight draws, there’s often enough growth potential to give them implied odds to draw. In these hands, you should often be trying to limit the pot size and NOT get all in, without a read you are very confident with. In these hands, you often realize you’re beat when there’s still a lot of money in your stack, and you haven’t invested a ton, so you can more easily get away from the hand.
You shouldn’t play the hand robotically based on the SPR. But, in general, you have certain goals. With a small SPR, you should be more comfortable getting all the money in. With a medium SPR, you might want to exercise some pot control if possible. With a large SPR, you should be considering folding if you’re meeting a lot of resistance and haven’t hit something big.
You Have Control Over the SPR, Sometimes
I’ll use the notation “w/100” in an example when you’re heads up, with beginning effective stacks of 100bb. You should always be buying in full, and using auto-top-off if available on your site.
Thinking about a favorable SPR is much easier than it sounds like. If you get 10% of your effective stack size in preflop (10bb w/100), you will get a good and low SPR (4.2 w/100), and even lower if you get multiple callers. If you only get 4% of your effective stack size in preflop (4bb w/100), you will be in that ugly SPR range (10.1 w/100.) Let me point out these are the situations where you open raise to 3 or 4bb, and just get one or two callers. This happens often, and will be the trickier hands.
Unfortunately, you only have so much control over the SPR. If you make a 3bb standard opening raise and get a single caller, you’re getting a SPR of 13 w/100. With a 4bb standard opening raise, you’re getting a SPR of 10 w/100. The only way to guarantee you don’t wind up in this ugly SPR range is to open raise 10bb to get a SPR of 4.2 w/100. But, this really isn’t an option, because it’s very rare to be in a game where you can make this type of open raise without everyone being suspicious that you have AA. And, if you do this routinely, they’ll catch on really quickly.
But, luckily, there are many situations you do have control over the SPR. If someone makes a standard opening raise and you flat call to be tricky, you’ve just set yourself up for making difficult decisions. If someone makes a standard opening raise of 3bb, you minraise to 5bb to be tricky, and villain flatcalls, you’ve just set yourself up for a SPR of 8.3 w/100. Instead, if you raised here to 10bb, and your opponent flatcalls, you’ll have an SPR of 4.2 w/100, which is much easier to play postflop.
7. Preflop – Limit How Many Hands See the Flop
AA is in excellent shape heads up, but it’s much more vulnerable as more people are in the pot. There can be a domino effect of people staying in the pot preflop. If you open raise and someone flats behind you, remaining players are more likely to come along with their weaker hands because they’re getting better odds to do so. When the flop comes, you have a lot to dodge, and worse, you often don’t have a good idea of what you have to dodge.
Let’s say you’re headed to the flop with three opponents, and they hold KhQh, 9h7h, and 44. You’re only expected to win 50.4% of the time here. Sure, to start, you’re getting 3:1 on your money, so that’s not bad. But, the pot’s going to grow from here, and assuming you don’t have a very low SPR, that’s not good. You can’t assign them a narrow range, and you have no idea what you have to dodge to be good.
Within this scenario, let’s say the flop comes 4h8sTh. Not knowing their cards, the flop looks non-threatening. Sure you need to be betting to charge the draws, but you think you’re way ahead. Truth is you’re crushed. The set of 4’s is way ahead with 57.3% equity, KhQh has 19.756% equity, and 9h7h has 16.2% equity. You aren’t winning this pot. (Well, you are 6.8% of the time.)
If, instead, you had headed to the flop heads up, things are much better. Against KhQh, you have 64.8% equity. Against 9h7h, you have 46.1% equity. Against 44, you only have 11% equity. On average, you’re winning 40.6% of the time.
So, even if you have a good SPR already, with some raising three people have flatted in front of you, now’s the time to re-raise, even though you risk taking it down right here. You don’t want to go into a multiway pot. Taking down the pot now isn’t bad, compared to the alternative.
If things just don’t go well and you wind up multiway, be much more cautious and thoughtful about getting a lot more money in.
8. Preflop – When Raised, Think About the Situation
If someone raises before you, you have a lot to consider.
• What position are you in? You should consider re-raising more when out of position, because you don’t have as much ability to affect the pot size postflop. And, playing unfavorable SPRs out of position are more difficult than playing them in position.
• If you flat, are you getting a favorable SPR? If not, consider re-raising. If so, consider flatting to under-represent your hand and induce mistakes from villain. But remember if you flat, that increases the chance of others flatting behind you, if there are others.
• Is there a habitual squeezer behind you? If you flat with a decent but not huge chunk of your stack in, you might make him think he has fold equity with you.
• What’s villain’s fold to 3bet percentage? If he loose or tight? If villain is tight and/or has a high fold to 3bet percentage, are you OK with winning the hand here, or would you prefer to play postflop to try to get more value? If villain is loose and/or has a low fold to 3bet percentage, consider re-raising to get more money in while you’re certainly ahead. This way, if he calls your 3bet with AK/AQ, you get a much larger pot if they fold to your flop cbet. Also, if they have KK/QQ and non-threatening low cards come, it will be harder for him to get away from his hand.
If someone open raises before you, you have a lot to consider. If you flat, villain’s raise probably wasn’t big enough to achieve a good SPR. If you flat, that increases the chance of people flatting behind you; you can always hope someone squeezes, but that won’t always happen. If the SPR is already very favorable, consider flatting. It might be better to induce villain to make mistakes than getting a fold.
Villain’s raise probably wasn’t big enough to achieve a good SPR, so you’ll want to consider re-raising.
You want to re-raise to achieve a better SPR, and limit how many opponents see the flop.
9. Preflop – Don’t Give Your Hand Away (Open Limping)
Don’t do it. Unless there is a maniac villain sitting behind you who is routinely raising limpers, and routingly re-raises when the original limper re-raises – AND hat he’s only being aggressive like this with limpers, not raisers. That’s really convoluted, and just isn’t going to happen.
Imagine you’re playing a hand, and you see a regular UTG who limps. Someone behind raises, and UTG re-raises. Isn’t your first reaction that he has something really strong, probably AA? Well, most people have this reaction. Hands that you want to continue will likely fold. Those that do continue will only continue playing postflop when they hit something big and know you’re not letting go of AA.
Even if there’s someone behind you that you know is going to punish a limper, and you’re going to re-raise him, so what? You’re just giving your hand strength here. Do you want them to know you have a very strong hand, so he can play well against it? Or, are you just trying to take down the blinds plus his 5bb raise?
Even worse, what if no one raises behind you? You’re letting junk and draw hands in cheap. When someone busts you with J8o in this situation, you only have yourself to blame.
10. Preflop – Don’t Give Your Hand Away (Open Shoving/Massive Over-Shoving)
Massive Over-Shoving : Out of line over-shove. You and villain have 100bb. Villain open raises to 4bb, you shove your whole 100bb stack in. Or, You open raise to 3bb, villain re-raises to 10bb, you shove your whole 100bb stack in.
I have to admit I am writing this section in theory only. I’ve tried about every other way to play AA. I’ve done very well playing a more straightforward strategy, which doesn’t include preflop open shoving or 3bet massive over-shoving. I’ve never had the guts to try either of these strategies enough to build a decent sample size to see how they work. I’ve always been afraid I’d wind up getting so many folds so often, that I’d be giving up all of my value. I have considered if I have free time some day (LOL), that I might try both of these strategies at smaller stakes, just to confirm that it’s not going to be profitable. But, I’d have to play so many hands to get a meaningful sample size, that I’ve never bothered.
For these calculations, we’ll assume my winrate of 4.77ptBB | 9.54bb per AA hand. At least in Rush, this seems to be a decent winrate for posters on 2+2, but there are others getting more like 5.55ptBB | 11.1bb per AA hand.
We’ll also assume we could get a single caller, and he has the hand we don’t want to see, 65s. Yes, we’re still going to win 77.501% of the time we get all in preflop against it, but this really is the hand most likely to crack our aces heads up. So, it will crack us 22.499% of the time.
Assuming we open shove 100bb, we need to get called 15% of the time by 65s or 13% of the time by KK to expect to make 4.7ptBB | 9.54bb per AA hand. I don’t think you’ll find yourself in many games where you can routinely expect to open shove 100bb and get called more than 15% of the time, unless you’re doing that with so many other hands, and then you’re going to be losing a lot of money on those.
Assuming villain makes a 3 or 4bb standard opening raise, I’m making 8.86ptBB | 17.72bb per AA hand. To earn this much, if we over shove 100bb, we need to get called 25% of the time by 65s or 22% of the time by KK. If villain 3bets 5% of the time, and will call your over shove with KK but nothing else (simplifying that he probably won’t also have AA), then he’s only calling 12.5% of the time. Some players would call with KK, others wouldn’t. If you routinely do this, they SHOULD realize they lose calling your move with KK. You’d need to be against a villain who would call lighter.
Assuming you make a 3 or 4bb standard opening raise, and you’re 3bet 10bb, I’m making 14.74ptBB | 29.48bb per AA hand. I actually earn 1.8 times as much when I flat rather than 4bet. But, let’s assume you over-shove. You need to get called 9% of the time by 65s or 8% of the time by KK. Sigh, if we have that same villain that 3bets 5% of the time, and calls with KK but nothing else, he’s calling 12.5% of the time, which looks good at first. But I still think you’d be playing like an open book and it wouldn’t be a good long term strategy. If you feel like trying this out for a few hundred thousand hands, let us know!
Also, IF your opponents notice you routinely do one of these moves, they’ll be less worried that you have AA when you aren’t making these moves.
11. Postflop – Continue Protecting Your Stack
This section may be a bit redundant, but I want this idea to stick out on its own. Protecting your stack isn’t like protecting your hand, which you hear about a lot. Protecting your hand is about charging others who are behind, but could pass you. Protecting your stack is similar, but with emphasis on deciding when to expose the rest of your stack. It’s about sometimes deciding not to commit to marginal or unknown EV situations, especially when you don’t have much invested yet. It's the idea that protecting your stack from being taken is more important than trying to win a pot at any cost. I'm not advocating becoming a complete nit, it's a fine line of course.
There’s times you are raised on the flop with a nasty board, where you haven’t invested a lot yet. You just aren’t sure if you’re getting check-raised on a draw, or if villain hit a set. If you haven’t invested a lot of money in the pot so far, and you can see it’s headed to a giant pot, it’s OK to dump AA here if you aren’t really comfortable with proceeding. The cards don’t remember you just had AA, it’s not like they’re going to make you wait exactly 221 more hands before you get them again. You don’t have to, but you can wait for a better spot. If you fold here and you’re beaten, you saved a lot of money. If you were ahead, you gave up some EV. If you continue here and you’re beaten, and lose a big pot, that mistake is much worse than giving up marginal EV earlier in the hand.
An example I’d like to give is a hand I played a few weeks ago. Villain was extremely nitty, with a 3bet around 1%, very low aggression, and a low cbet flop percentage. I open raised, he re-raised, and I called. We saw a flop heads up, and it was something like K92rainbow. I had a large sample size on him, and was able to think he had a really narrow range of AK/KK, which was pretty valid due to a large sample size and 1% 3bet. AK is possible, but less likely since we have two aces. AA is also possible, but even less likely. With this PARTICULAR villain, I think I should have let this hand go pretty easily. When I check to the raiser and he pots, I can hope he has AK or perhaps QQ and my 3bet percentage is off on him, but I haven’t invested a lot here, and it’s OK to let it go. If he has KK and I continue, I’m losing a big pot. If he has AK or QQ, I’m not winning a big pot off of this nit.
12. Postflop – Slow Down. Think About Villain’s Range, What Beats You, and What Do You Beat That Continues
I can’t tell you exactly when you should fold AA. It is going to require you losing when them a lot, and trusting your gut to a certain extent.
Things change when the community cards come out. Everyone shares them. Your hole cards are still important, but their absolute value is less important. What matters more now is how you connect with the community cards compared to villain’s range. And, as we discussed earlier, you probably don’t connect with the board.
I win 92.1% of the time with AA. I see a flop 55% of the time when I have AA. When I do see a flop, I win 85.63%, lose 11.87%, and fold 2.5%. I probably don’t fold AA enough actually. I’m guessing those with higher AA winrates fold it slightly more often than 2.5% of the time when they see a flop. I’m still working on those situations where I know I’m beat but don’t ditch them.
A lot of people recommend not making actions faster with AA than other hands. I’m actually going to argue that you should consider your decisions more than you normally do – and not just act like you are, but actually considering them. If you keep making instant large bets, you’re telling villain that you were betting no matter what, which probably indicates a strong hand. This gives him information. If you at least spend the time you usually would to make a decision, you at least give the impression that you had to consider a decision. I recommend spending more time on your decisions with AA, because those hands are often going to be big ones. And, players can fight it, but they are more attached with AA than other hands. Taking an extra moment to look both ways can save yourself a lot of money.
NOTE: When I say consider folding, I don’t mean to actually fold. Just seriously consider it, and do it when you feel it’s appropriate.
If the board has 3 of the same suit and a villain is being aggressive, you should consider folding. Not always, but players often play flush draws more aggressively when both their hole cards are the same suit and there’s two of that suit on the board, than when one of their hole cards matches three of the same suit on the board. You should consider folding even more if the pot is multiway, and multiple villains seem happy about the board.
Worse yet, if the board has 4 of the same suit or 4 to a flush and there’s a lot of action, you’re very likely beat.
If you’re facing resistance and the board is paired, you should consider folding. With the action in the hand already, and the value of the paired cards, how likely is it that villain has trips? If it was cheap to get this far into the hand, remember Axs or suited connectors hitting trips is quite possible. If it was expensive to get this far and the paired cards are low, villain is less likely to have trips.
If you’re facing a lot of resistance, always consider sets. Did villain get correct odds to setmine preflop? Would this villain do it anyway even without the correct odds? Sets are more likely when villain is calling bets quickly, minraising, donk betting, or surprise raising you all in on the turn or river.
If you’re last to act in a 3 way pot with lots of preflop action, the flop comes KQJ, the first to act bets, and the second to act makes large raise, you’re probably drawing to a weak one ended straight draw. What do you really think they have that you beat? Sure you’re beating AK, but if two players are already being very aggressive with each other, this tells you something, and it isn’t good. Spiking an Ace on the turn or river could be valid outs, but that’s rare to hit, and you might not be good there also – it’s possible a villain could have TT, and be going with an open ended draw – it’s less likely that villain could have AT, but it’s possible.
If the flop instead comes KQJs and you’re first to act, realize if you bet here, you’re bluffing – not value betting.
OK, I think here’s a very valuable information nugget. Pull up PT3 or HEM. Filter to when you faced a raise on the river, you did not have a set, straight, flush, full house, or quads, and had a pocket pair overpair on the river. Did you win any of these hands? Not many, huh? If you were correctly playing AA aggressively, and someone raised your bet on the river, they probably aren’t bluffing. If you’ve played a lot of hands and have paid to see they’re virtually always beating you here when you haven’t improved, you really can benefit from letting it go to a decent size river raise, even if the pot’s a decent size. This is unless villain is very capable of raising the river as a complete bluff, which many players don’t have in their arsenal when you’ve been showing such aggression.
13. Postflop – Baluga Theorem and River Extension
The Baluga theorem states when you have been the aggressor in a hand, and you are raised on the turn, you need to severely re-evaluate if your hand is any good. I wanted this to be it’s own section, to emphasize that you should fear turn raises more than flop raises. On the flop, opponents are more willing to semi-bluff draws because there’s two more cards to come. On the turn, presumably, you’ve shown a lot of strength, and there’s only one more card to come to fill their draw, so they’ll be less likely to semi-bluff here.
Likewise, you need to re-evaluate a river raise more than a flop raise. I believe you’re against an even stronger hand when raised on the river than the turn, but that’s for another day in another COTW. I haven't read up on this to be sure, and I haven't looked in my database enough to be sure.
A raise doesn’t mean an instant fold. It’s quite possible they’re raising an overpair (obviously inferior to AA). But, it does mean you have to slow down and figure out what you think is going on. Don’t just default to thinking, “Yay, money’s going in the pot and I have AA.”
14. Postflop – Betting, Sizing, and Timing
When deciding whether to bet, and if so, how much, you should be considering the SPR, the board texture, how many are in the pot, and what you know about each villain, and most importantly, how these four things interact.
If you have an extremely low SPR like 2, the board isn’t coordinated so draws are unlikely, and villain is aggressive, you can consider checking to induce a weak value bet or a complete bluff. Playing against short stackers can fall into this category. It’s easy to get a low SPR, and if you show weakness, they will often pounce on their one pair or even their fold equity with a complete bluff. If you bet, they’ll probably still go all in with top pair, but you’re removing their chance to make a bluff. If it won’t be difficult to get all the money in on the turn and river, you can afford to risk a check behind on the flop if the board isn’t very threatening.
Especially with medium and large SPRs, if you keep betting pot, it’s more likely for one pair hands that you beat to fold, and hands that have you beat to continue. If you’re going to bet, you want to bet big, but consider betting 2/3 or 3/4 pot instead of a full pot, to allow hands you beat to continue more easily.
If you have a medium or large SPR, sometimes you should consider checking. But, you should be much less willing to do this when the board has many draws. If you’re in position, this can induce a bet from worse hands or complete bluffs. If you’re out of position, this can control the pot size preventing difficult decisions if your opponent shoves.
If there are straight and/or flush draws on the board, you need to make sure to bet enough to charge draws. This does two things. First, it extracts value while they’re still willing to put money in the pot. If they miss on the river, they’re not putting more money in. Second, it makes it more likely that draws will fold before they hit. If you aren’t going to bet big enough to charge draws, and a draw hits, you have to be willing to easily let go of your hand because you let them get there free or at a good price.
15. Deep Stacks
I’m going to discuss Harrington’s First Law, because it discusses playing AA with deep stacks very well. Definitions of “deep stack” can vary, but 175bb+ is a decent definition. Harrington’s First Law states that strong hands have less of an advantage over week hands as stack sizes get very large. This law heavily relates to SPR, before the term SPR was coined. He’s assuming preflop raising is based on blind size, rather than stack size. With a very large stack, you get a higher SPR value.
In
Harrington on Cash Games: How to Win at No-Limit Hold ‘Em Money Games, he discusses 53 playing against AA. Of course AA is more likely to win, but if 53 doesn’t hit the flop hard, it doesn’t put more money in. If 53 does hit the flop hard, a lot of money goes in with AA being an underdog often without knowing it.
So, the lesson is, be more careful and aware of SPR when you are deep stacked and are dealt AA.
16. Why Do I Only Win Small Pots With AA?
It’s your winrate that matters with AA, not the pot sizes that you are winning. As I mentioned earlier, a decent winrate with AA seems to be around 4.77ptBB | 9.54BB per hand.
You should be winning many small pots with AA! You’re only going to win a big pot when villain really thinks their hand is best, but is actually behind. This requires the cards to line up just right, and just isn’t going to happen every time.
Many players are disappointed to win a small pot with AA, so you might be remembering these hands more. Check PT3/HEM to see if you’re really only winning small pots AND that your winrate is below average. Remember, we’re talking about winning that large pot, not losing it! You should be playing AA aggressively to push out junk hands, which leads you to many small pots. Most of the times, your opponents won’t have great hands to play back with your aggression, and these times where your opponent has T9s, or worse 65s, do you really want him getting in the hand cheaply?
If after considering all this you still think you’re only winning small pots AND your winrate is below average, it’s possible that you are playing against opponents skilled enough to think about your style, and that you’re perceived as too tight.
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