Pocket aces

why do pocket aces lose the majority of the time, what is the best way to play them?

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Fold em. Around here Kings rule :+1:t2:

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yeah i think thats good advice

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That’s exactly why I don’t understand it when players keep raising silly amounts before the flop. You can have the best pre-flop hand ever and come out on the losing side, so why bother? Aces are generally very good before the flop, but again, it’s all about what comes up on the board, you can either look invincible or silly.

It all depends on the situation as well, whether you are in a Ring game at low stakes, or reaching the business end of a tournament, and how many players are involved in the hand at the table. In theory, the more players, the less chance of you ending up with a winning hand. Heads-up play, it’s more advantageous to have them dealt. Decisions to be made there and then I guess.

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Pocket aces get cracked here on Replay so frequently because so many players play any two pocket cards all the way to showdown and suck out on the player holding AA. I played yesterday and it happened twice in a brief period of time, first to another player and then to me awhile later. I don’t remember what the first player lost to, but if the guy who won had been a competent player, he wouldn’t have kept playing his cards against large bets and raises. In my case, I had AhAs raised to 65, several people called, and we saw the flop. Flop came 9hQd3h villain raised to 78, I reraised to 325, everyone folded but villain and he called. . I now had top pair and a flush draw. The turn came 5c, villain raised all in I called and the river turned a 4s, he had 6h7c giving him a straight. A competent player wouldn’t have ever gone as far in the hand with what he was holding. It’s frustrating, but it’s poker and not as uncommon as you’d think here at Replay.

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thankyou for your replies

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Yes, you have to keep in mind also, a pair of Aces is just a Pair. So much to lose against, especially with straight and non-favourable flush draws on the board. Really, it’s best to play them like any other decent pocket pair, hoping to hit 3 of a kind or at the very least a useful 2 Pair.

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good advice

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Hi @D_ash ,

Yes, pockets aces will beat any hand pre-flop at least 80% of the time.

So 1 out of 5 times, you can lose pre-flop.

It’s just variance. But in the long run, you will win.

Hope it helps!

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thanks luffy

No problem @D_ash , just continue to play good poker and make +EV plays only.

You will definitely win in the long run.

Think of it like running a Casino, the house always win in the long run.

Cheers!

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They are not worth playing and the amount of players that chase anything is ridiculous.

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Fold them so u do not have to be mad when they get beat:).

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Not with 6 players chasing you to the river…:slight_smile:

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Free chips?

Think about it. A player with pocket pairs flops a set 12% of the time. So if you’re willing to go all-in on the river with pocket aces, and you’re not putting 12% of the effective stack size (Google it) in preflop, on average this is a losing play. In other words, you’re probably limping too much. If you only raise preflop with premium hands, people will notice and fold to your premiums. So then you end up limping with your premiums. But this is a problem, because of the aforementioned point. Therefore, you’ve gotta start raising some more marginal hands. Get YouTube up and watch the professionals play. You can look up “Triton Million” if you like good production values. Okay, did you do that? They don’t seem to be limping much, right?

One of the many benefits of limping less is that when you’ve got a monster like pocket aces, you can easily get 12% of each caller’s effective stack in preflop, ensuring that you can call them down on most flop textures and still be profitable in the long run. Raising preflop also allows you to steal the pot sometimes, without giving your opponent a chance to hit some kind of silly full house with J2o that just cleans you out because seriously, who plays J2o? Well, apparently your opponent does, and you’re not punishing them for that, which is technically a blunder.

It’s important to understand 3-betting and 4-betting (Google them). One of the main reasons for 3-betting is to ensure your opponent’s attempts at set-mining are, at best, a break even play, unless your opponent is stealing a lot of pots. Whereas 4-betting ensures you’ve already made some money against lower pockets (22, 33, 44, etc.), even before the hand starts. If your opponent is calling your 4-bets with these kinds of lower pockets, sure, they might hit their set and stack you, but you’ve still outplayed them, because they WAY overpaid for the chance to stack you, and on average this is $$$ for you. And if they fold instead, you’re picking up a 3-bet pot uncontested, which is obviously very nice.

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I understand what you’re saying, but logic doesn’t work when it comes to Free Poker sites. AA gets cracked more often because multiple people call virtually every hand, and even when you do make a large raise, you’ll still often get multiple callers and many of them go to showdown with hands as bad as 72o, and they sometimes win. Unfortunately, being nitty and limping work at free poker because you aren’t playing against poker pros; you’re playing fish, and I mean spewfish. The way to beat them is to play like a NIT and patiently wait for a monster. They aren’t paying attention to the fact that your bet sizes are polarized, they aren’t thinking about ranges, and they aren’t doing any higher level thinking as they’re only looking at their own hands. Where a thinking poker knows to dump lousy cards and not do stupid stuff out of position, the all inners and other fish aren’t giving any of that any consideration whatsoever.

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Pocket aces is NOT a monster on Replay Poker.

Last year i played on tables, and after playing i looked then to my activity page and searched for pocket AA. I saved the resuts won, lost and how many won to a tab sheet (Excel,…). I did this over months and saw the results. You can do this too. And you can save too how you played, slowplay, All In,… Result: It won.
221 hands are needed to get 1x AA. Not many to do to save this.

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I agree. When it costs nothing to go all in, everything is game. I play cash games exclusively. The greatest benefit I’ve gained from Replay is learning to be patient. Large bets on the turn are usually the nuts. Large bets on the River, are the nuts. I’ve proven this to myself. In the last multitude of hands, I’ve only won once when I’ve called or raised a large bet on the River. So now, unless I have a super hand, I just fold. Fortunately, when I do have a hand I win big. It can be boring playing like a NIT, but “boring poker is winning poker.” The fish are schooling here at Replay. if you want to move to real money poker, playing here is beneficial in that you can get a free schooling on reading board textures and putting people on ranges. You also can pretty quickly put players on a style of play. Also, the clock here is much faster than paysites, so you have to be able to make quick decisions.

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