Everybody wants to play pocket Aces. It is fun to look up and see A-A in you hand. However, playing pocket Aces in online No Limit Texas Holdem can be tricky. I think many times everyone wants to have this hand but they have given very little thought to how to play it once it is dealt to you.
Here is the basic dilemma with pocket Aces, especially as it relates to online NL Texas Holdem: so many player limp into hands and play virtually any two cards. The problem with limping into hands is that you are susceptible to the worst kind of suck outs imaginable. This may explain why you see so many players with pocket Aces get cracked against really good players. Basically, it is exactly this kind of suck out that leads to the big pots andEventually these players will go all in and crack your AA. The fundamental problem with playing pocket Aces all the time is that everyone at the table is chancing their luck a lot of the time and this leads to very inconsistent results.
Therefore, I give you some advice on playing Dewapoker softly. The general rule of thumb that I use is not to stick around in a hand with other people unless you have a specific reason to be in. The best situations to limp are not when you have other good hands to play (like AK) but rather when you are heads up against a player that is a lot better than yours. The reason for this is because if you both can hit a flop, you obviously have a better hand than your opponent. The problem with being heads up is that the more people in the hand, the higher your odds are of getting outdrawn. Therefore, the most important thing to remember about playing Aces is that it is never a sure bet. It is never a sure bet that you will win, that you will win before an ace comes on the flop, or that you will hit a flop and make a lot of money. It is just a hand that you want to play against a lot of opponents because against good opponents, you will have a lot of fold equity and also, the most important thing, you will likely make more money than you will lose with it.
If you can hit an ace on the flop, or a pocket pair, you obviously have a very strong hand. You should by no means be backing off from a raise. The goal is to get as many raises in as you can when you have aces. You really want to suck out some money so that you can double up. However, you don’t want a lot of opponents in the hand because that will raise your odds to having to hit your ace or make a lot of large bets. The goal is to make a lot of small bets and thus win small pots rather then lose a lot of small ones.
What you want to be able to accomplish with pocket Aces is be the person that takes the most money out of the pot when you have the best of it. You want the pot to be just a small stack compared to your stack. You don’t want to be getting the most of your money with this hand. Thus, you should not play a lot of hands other then pocket Aces or pocket Kings. This is because you want to let the pot build to a lot so that you can double up after you have aces or kings. However, you are never going to get premium hands and you are just going to get beat by a lot of mediocre hands.
If you think about it, you are really just playing against yourself. You want to play pocket Aces when you have the most chips after you have folded. However, you are never going to be able to be able to get dealt a pocket that has an ace and a picture card. You will always have to have aces for this to happen. Thus, you can play a lot of other hands simply depending on the Ace and picture card you are holding.