FOLDING POCKET ACES?!?!? POKER TALK WITH FRANK

FOLDING POCKET ACES?!?!? POKER TALK WITH FRANK

The amount of variables that go into a poker decision at times can be endless: Am I in a tournament or a cash game? What is my position? What is my stack size and other player’s stack sizes in the hand? What are the player’s tendencies that are in the hand? Are we close to the money in a tournament? What is my history with the player(s) in the hand?  I can keep going, but I think you get my point. In my blogs, I occasionally try to talk about less talked about topics. There are a million blogs about 3 betting strategies pre flop. Let’s talk about something that is rarely or never mentioned, when can a player play poker again? 

Have you ever seen someone fold pocket Aces pre flop before? I have! And it wasn’t in a satellite where there were 6 seats given away and 7 players left and 2 players short stacked and it made sense to fold them. This was in a $2/$5 cash game, believe it or not. I was playing at the Borgata in Atlantic City and a young kid sat down to take his very first hand in the big blind with a shorter stack ($300 I believe). It gets folded around to the button who raises to $15. The young kid reraises to $45. The button has a big stack and reraises to $120. The young kid starts squirming in his seat, obviously very uncomfortable. I’m thinking he was making a play back at the button raise and got caught. He starts talking out loud about how he just drove 2 hours to the casino and that he knows that he is going to bust out the first hand and have to turn around and drive all the way home after just 1 hand of poker. What could he be holding? AK? JJ? It was obvious to me, or so I thought, that he had a very good hand, but not a great hand. He then proceeded to do something that I never thought I would see. He turned over AA and said, “I fold”. The button sheepishly turned over QJ suited and took the pot. 

Very few people obviously would ever do this, but I tried to understand why he did what he did. He, of course, was under bankrolled for the game he was playing in since he only had 1 buy in available. He also was playing with scared money in a different than normal context. He wasn’t concerned about trying to make correct +EV decisions. He instead was worried about not getting to play poker for a long period of time after driving for 2 hours. Now I don’t expect to ever run into this scenario again, but it made me think about situations where players are in where, if they bust, they aren’t able to play poker again right away. The obvious situation is in a live freezeout (no rebuy) tournament or in a rebuy tournament once the rebuy period has ended. The other less talked about situation is online tournaments. If someone busts an online tournament, they are just one click away from jumping into another tournament. That being said, most players, especially in smaller buy in online tournaments, tend to not value their tournament life as much as someone who drove 2 hours to play in a live tournament and has to turn around and drive 2 hours home thinking about how he misplayed a hand to bust. They either win a big pot and double up or they click on another tournament to buy into. This is just one more variable to have on your radar when you are about to make a decision in a hand.

Frank DiRe (@FLD15 on X)