Aces vs. Kings

Everyone who plays hold’em has no doubt had the experience multiple times. Kings vs. Aces.  Aces vs. Kings.  Sometimes you’re the one the Aces, and the other poor sap has the Kings (definitely the dreaded pocket Kings in this case).  Of course, sometimes you’re on the wrong end of it and you’re stuck with those Kings, and a big underdog to suck out on those pocket rockets.

As I commented in this post here, it seems to me like it happens more often than it should by the probabilities.  I speculated that it seems that way because it’s always so memorable.  Even when you’re not in the hand—and unless you’re the one with the Aces, you pray you’re not in the hand—you remember it later, right?

Well, for this post I did some Googling and I came up with this page here,  If their math is right, when you get pocket Kings (which you should get once every 221 hands), and you’re playing against a full 9 or 10 handed table, there’s about a 1 in 25 chance one of your opponents has 2 Aces.   Yeah, it seems like, in reality, it happens more often than that.  Memory playing tricks, I guess.

The question then becomes, in a cash game, are you ever sure enough that your opponent has Aces that you fold Kings preflop?  Ever?  I have no answer for that.  I’m actually asking for input, when can you be sure enough to do that?  Even if the guy who’s re-raising you is 85 years old and hasn’t played a hand in the past three hours, do you fold them?  Or do you at least consider it if your stacks are really big?  If you’re in a 1/2 game and you and the other guy each have over $1000 in front of you, do you play it safe and refuse to get it all in against the guy who obviously wants to do just that?

I actually did a post about another player I saw fold Kings face up, here.  In that case, we never saw what the other guy had, so maybe he had Queens.  Maybe he had Ace-King.  We’ll never know.  And in a very unique tournament situation once, where I had a really good read, I did fold Kings to Aces once myself (see here).  But generally, until I figure it out, yeah, I’m gonna probably lose my stack that 1 in 25 times my cowboys meet the bullets.  I hope though, that every time I’m the one with Aces, those Kings stack off to me as well.

So late into my January visit, I’m at BSC and my buddy Mike dealing.  I had just gotten to the table.  A few hands in, in early position, he dealt me pocket 3’s.  I meant to limp, but accidently picked up one $5 chip along with the $1 chip, so I inadvertently raised to $6.  Oh well.

Three people called my accidental raise and lo and behold, I flopped a set of 3’s.  Which makes me wonder if I should always raise with a low pocket pair?  Or will it only work if i accidentally raise with them?

Anyway, no one called my flop bet, so my accidental raise got me a bigger pot than if I had limped.  Maybe.  If I had limped, perhaps someone who folded would have called and had enough of the flop to pay me off on the flop and maybe thereafter?  Of course, maybe that limper catches a straight or a flush draw and hits it and I lose a big pot?  Who knows?

I was amused at the success of my accidental raised, and stayed amused until a few hands later, Mike delivers me a couple of Kings.  I should point out that back in the days when I was playing 2/4, it seemed like Mike dealt me pocket Kings almost every down he dealt to me.  Not quite true, but it happened so often we had a running gag about it.

Of course, KK is not nearly as good as hand in 2/4 as in a NL game (holy shit, did I just imply KK is a good hand?  Who the hell am I?).  Very few players will fold to your measly $2 preflop raise, especially if they have an Ace, even an Ace with a crappy kicker. Pots in 2/4 almost always go to showdown and the odds of a pair of Kings being the best hand at the end are slim.  You really better catch a set of Kings in 2/4 if you expect to win with them.

Oddly enough, since I started playing NL, I don’t think Mike has dealt me that dreaded hand any more often (or less often) than any other dealer who deals to me as often as Mike does.

I was in late position at this point.  An older guy limped in, then a guy who was wearing a baseball cap that was too small for his head (but at least it wasn’t backward, like the guy in the post here) made it $10.  Looked promising.  It folded to me and I made it $25.  The old guy, who had originally limped, shocked me by making it $60.

(Note, the girl in the picture above looks nothing like the guy in the too-small baseball cap in my story, obviously. But since I don’t have a picture of that guy, she seems like a worthy substitute.  And maybe the Red Sox cap and shirt will get Josie to show up and prove she's still alive and well.)

It was hard to put him on a hand.  I had been at the table less than two orbits, so I didn’t really have a feel for any of the players.  But from what I’d seen, it wasn’t the kind of table where you could be sure that someone would always raise preflop.  So limping in with a big hand under the assumption you’d have a chance to limp/raise, as he did, would be very risky.

Baseball cap guy thought for a bit and then folded.  I didn’t really think about it very long.  Only one hand beats me there and I can’t limit his range to that one hand.  Maybe if I’d played with him longer, I could have.  I shove.  When he snap-called I knew I was in trouble.  Especially since he had more chips than I did.

I flipped over my Kings and asked him if he had Aces.  He didn’t say a word but turned over his cards and of course he had AA.  I reached in my pocket for my wallet to reload while Mike dealt out a board that didn’t hit either one of us.  Of course, it didn’t have to hit him.

Grrr.  I don’t think I played that wrong, but please let me know if you feel otherwise.

That was the start of a bad night.  No more big disasters, just a steady drip, drip, drip.  I was down to about half my second $200 buy-in when I was dealt 8-5 in the small blind.  A number of limpers made it fairly easy for me to toss in another buck to see the flop.  Good call.  The flop came 9-7-6. 

I led out and the old guy who stacked me made a pretty big raise.  So I shoved.  He snap-called again.  I showed my straight but this time he didn’t show his cards.  After the board was dealt out, he looked at for a few seconds and folded.  So I got a little bit of revenge.

That got me my second buy-in back, I played a bit longer, lost a little bit more (drip, drip, drip) and left down a little more than a buy-in.

And with one more story to tell about the dreaded pocket Kings.

I  should point out that since this story took place, I’ve encountered the ol’ Aces vs King scenario quite a few more times.  Some of those times will be blogged about in the future.  More evidence to justify my gut feeling that this situation seems to happen a lot more than the law of averages would dictate.