Page 8 - November 2005 • Southern California Gaming Guide

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
Page 8
November 2005
Ace-King: Big Slick or Big Loser
by Jim Mercurio
What’s up with AK? Its two most popular nicknames are Walking Back to Texas and Big Slick. Does this hand deserve props or does it deserve to be treated like a redheaded stepchild?
Imagine this: rst hand of the WSOP Main Event and a player goes all-in for $10,000. You have AK suited. Do you throw in your $9750 in chips and try to double up? No, you muck it as if it were 27. If you call against his Aces, your AK deserves its new nickname: Walking back to your seedy $59 Expedia bargain rattrap room.
But all of the cool players go all-in with AK on TV. Sure, but it’s all relative. You have to consider the math and the context.
Poker: Wired Aces and River Rats with Jim Mercurio
Other than Kx, there is no other hand where AK has any better than about a 2-1 or so advantage. AK vs 72 is about 2:1. Against 89s, AK is 3:2. So when you have plenty of chips and you’re not the worst player at the table, pot odds of 1.5 to 1 just aren’t enough to bet the farm on AK pre- op.
On the ip side, if you forget aces and kings for a second, AK is never worse than a 57:43 underdog. So late in tournaments when players are short-stacked and are forced to take stands with less than premium hands, suddenly AK becomes playable or even a monster. If you are getting 3 to 1 on your money, you can call a player who has kings.
So let’s say there’s $1,000 in dead money in the pot. You and your opponent both have 10k in chips. You raise to 3k and now he comes over the top for all of his
chips.7ktowin14k.Youaregettingexactly2:1.
You have to ask yourself what your opponent could have and what is the likelihood of each holding. (Use the chart at the end as reference.) Let’s say the player is
a rock, so you put him on this: aces, 20% chance; kings, 20% chance; underpair, 60% chance.
We see that our $7,000 nets us only $4816. Here, AK is an easy fold. (Note: if you had raised to $4625,
you would’ve had exactly the pot odds to call.)
is was assuming he was a rock. But if you’re late in the tournament and the blinds are large relative to the stack-sizes, even a solid player might make the all- in re-raise with just high cards. And considering you already have an ace and a king, what follows is a more realistic breakdown of possible hands:
“Your judgment and instincts are as important as the math. Use the size of the blinds, the opponent’s table image, your own table image and possibly
even the prize structure of the tournament to decide whether or not you like your AK.”
not you like your AK. And remember, AK is a drawing hand, so if you are going to be risking all of your chips with it, it’s often better to be the bettor. en you can win if everyone folds and you give yourself the most chances to make your hand.
Pay attention, think about the context and you won’t be a big, slick loser or a Big Slick loser.
Here, we’re above the break-even point. Our $7,000 call is pro table. If you can assign a higher likelihood that he has only a couple of face cards or is on a stone-cold blu , AK starts living up to its nickname, Big Slick.
Your judgment and instincts are as important as the math. Use the size of the blinds, the opponent’s table image, your own table image and possibly even the prize structure of the tournament to decide whether or
Jim will be lecturing at the Screenwriting Expo on the weekend of 11/11 in Los Angeles (www.screenwritingexpo.com) and attending the Howard Lederer and Annie Duke’s Fantasy Poker camp the rst week in
December (www.allincamp.com). Come out and say hi.