Pocket Aces

You know the feeling. You are playing a live tournament and you peek at your hole cards and you see one red ace and then a black one. Your heart rate goes up. This is it. You have the premier starting hand in Holdem. You mentally think of all those chips coming your way. You might even start to sweat a bit. How are you going to play them.

It reminds me of when you are back in your teens (yes Josie I do remember way back then) and there was a hot girl you finally asked out. The excitement. What shall you do? Then you go out on your first date and you realize that once she opens her mouth her attractiveness goes away. You had built up all that excitement to be utterly disappointed.

Aces are like that. They seem so pretty sitting in your hand preflop but after the flop they are really just two cards. Oh they are very good cards but they really can bring out some unbelievable highs and lows. We have all felt them.

So many experts have different ways of playing them but the conventional wisdom is you want one caller. At least that's my thought on them. I remember many times seeing people push preflop with Aces and have everybody fold and I would shake my head or ask them why. Their excuse was always well I didn't want to lose with them. That to me would be like never asking that cute girl out. If you don't take a chance then you will never know.

In the last 3 days I have had pocket Aces 3 times. Twice online and once in that charity tournament that I was in on Saturday. Guess what?? I lost all 3 times. On Saturday it was a straight on the river that did me in. He called me with A9. Had him totally dominated. Yesterday online it was someone had pocket deuces that hit their trips. Just a few minutes ago I was playing a 5.00 SNG 9 player online and I had about 1700 chips. 6 players left. I was third in chips. I look down and there they are pocket Aces. How am I going to get the most from them. I think blinds were at 50/100. I raised just to 300. The SB reraised me to 600. He's obviously got a big hand. I decided to shove. He thought for a long time. Had me covered. He called. He's got pocket Queens. Yes. Flop comes 338. Turn is a........................ Queen. River is ...... It doesn't matter because it wasn't an Ace. Yep lost again. Now some would say I should have just called his preflop raise but with that flop all the chips were going in post flop anyways. It really didn't matter.

It's funny because you really don't get Aces that often. Sometimes I can go a couple weeks and not see them and I play live at least three times a week and also online. Sometimes more. They seem to come in bunches.

So in the last three appearances of those lovely Aces I am 0/3. I am glad my dating life wasn't like that. Not impressive. So in the interest of science I am for the next few months going to keep track of how many times Aces win for me. The only caveat being I must get a caller. It will be interesting keeping track of this.

Aces: 0/3