Playing Limit Before The Flop part three

Of course, big aces play themselves most of the time be it in full ring Texas Holdem poker games, short handed games or heads up encounters. But not all ace type hands involve a big side card and many players misplay hands like A-9 and A-7 in full ring games. These types of errors do not go punished anywhere near as much in short handed games.

I see some players get far too aggressive with ace rag hands and I think that they are making a big mistake. I will raise to attack the blinds from the cut-off and the button and will defend my blinds against most raises with ace rag hands but three betting is certainly not on my agenda. Even if your opponent has a history of raising on a wide range of holdings, ace rag hands can burn several bets when you hit the ace and are behind your opponents bigger ace.

Another factor behind why I do not like small aces is that essentially they are a one card hand and I do not like one card hands unless I am attacking the blinds or defending them in five/six handed games. I like to have hands where pairing either of my cards can win me a pot. If I three bet with a hand like A-4 and the flop comes J-6-4 then I am going to be in a little bit of trouble against a hand like K-J for instance. At the end of the day, no dominated hand in poker is in great shape and that is precisely the type of hand that you are building when you play ace rag hands in raised pots.

It is somewhat different when you are defending the big blinds as you are frequently receiving pot odds. Bigger aces can be very good hands in short handed games for the simple reason that it puts you on the flip side of what we have just been discussing. Namely that you are now dominating players who have come into the pot with ace rag type hands. Now it is you who is in the driving seat and not them and not to mention that you now have a two card hand and not just one.

Limit hold’em like Pot Limit Omaha is a fantastically complex game and your entire earn rate is arrived at through having to make thousands upon thousand of decisions. In fact if you are a poor poker player and someone who is poor at making decisions then limit hold’em will kill you because you will be faced with more decisions in limit hold’em than any other form of poker. You will be forced to see flops and turn and river cards constantly. While no single decision will be catastrophic to your stack, bad decisions will slowly but surely take their toll on your bankroll.

In a game like no limit hold’em, if you pick and choose your targets carefully enough then you can make a decent amount of money without having to make anywhere near the number of decisions that you have to make at limit.

Of course one would argue that the decisions that you have to make in no limit carry greater weight but in my mind, the only difference between a bad player in limit and no limit is that the bad player in limit will survive for longer thus earning the site more rake. The bottom line is though that they are still dead in the long run.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”

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