question about AA

[Ivory]

is getting all your chips in preflop with aa always +EV ?
i understand that preflop nothing beats it but you never know what the flop is going to be, getting all your money in preflop leaves you no chance to get away from it. just asking because i dropped 80$ going in against qq and q came on flop, i knew he had a pp by him re-raising me preflop as he seemed like a tight aggressive player so i went all in, now if i called his preflop raise and saw a queen on the flop i might have been able to get away and only lost 10 or 20$. i'm starting to doubt them, maybe its just the way i play them.

edit: it just seems now everytime i get them i dont think "how much can i win now" its more like "uh oh, how much might i lose"

[bigred]

You're putting your money in when you're ahead, that will always be +EV

Do you have poker tracker? Look at your stats with AA.

[bigred]

[05:27] <Triptanes> is getting AI preflop with my AA +EV?
[05:27] <Triptanes> dude wtf
[05:27] <Triptanes> is getting a girl drunk and banging her +EV
[05:27] <Triptanes> duh

[Ivory]

maybe i said it wrong, when an opponent obviously has a high pp and your holding aces by going all in preflop your giving yourself 5 chances to be outdrawn. by raising and isolating the player with the pocket pair and calling to see the flop if no a k q or j flops, you can still go all in and have a good chance of being called by your opponent and you now only have 2 chances of being outdrawn as opposed to 5. does this make sense?

maybe i said it wrong, when an opponent obviously has a high pp and your holding aces by going all in preflop your giving yourself 5 chances to be outdrawn. by raising and isolating the player with the pocket pair and calling to see the flop if no a k q or j flops, you can still go all in and have a good chance of being called by your opponent and you now only have 2 chances of being outdrawn as opposed to 5. does this make sense?

No. Say he has a pair of queens. He raises.

Say you reraise all-in and he calls. Now you have 80% chance to destack him.

Say you call and see the flop. It's king high. Now you have 0% chance to destack him.

[Ivory]

i understand your point but while there is only a 20% chance i lose its still 20%, say that 20% is spread evenly out over the 5 community cards 4% each if i call to see the flop i'm now only giving him an 8% chance to destack me. while i still have an advantage going all in preflop i can increase my advantage even more, theres a 12%(i got this off google dont know how reliable this is) chance of hitting a king high flop and by calling to see it i increase my advantage by 12% i'm not a statistician or even good at maths so this might be total garbage im just trying to think about it in different ways

[biondino]

Ivory, this is the simplest question in poker. Yes, it is +EV to put all your money in pre-flop every time.

If he has QQ, there are 2 cards (plus a small chance of flush or straight) that will beat you. If he has AK, he needs either 2 kings or a flush or a straight to beat you. If he has KQ, he needs two kings, two queens, one of each or a flush or a straight or a boat to beat you. Ditto if he has 83. All of these are hugely unlikely in poker terms.

[Ivory]

i know going all in preflop with aa is a good move what i meant to say is would it not be safer to call and see the flop and judge wether or not your opponent hit a set before committing all your chips....meh, nevermind.

i think i just used the wrong term by saying is it +ev

edit: and when i mean judge wether or not he hit a set in my original post i knew 100% he had atleast jacks i'm not talking about any set...otherwise that would get confusing lol

[biondino]

Dude, you will win 80% of showdowns against one opponent when you both go in pre-flop (assuming he doesn't have AA too), so it is totally "safe" as you put it - you'd kill for odds of 80% most of the time in NL.

The thing about sets is that they're the most well-disguised hand in poker. Flop is 35J - how could you possibly guess that someone has a set there? You can put in a pot-sized bet and see if you get raised,then fold, maybe - but you're far more likely to get smooth called, so the amount of useful info you get here is minimal, especially as low-limit players smooth-call all the time anyway.

So what do you do? If you bet the pot and get called when 35J is on the board, do you check/fold on the turn? There is a huge chance you'd be folding the best hand, and THAT is the opposite of +EV.

Going all-in with AA makes life utterly simple. You don't have to make any decisions after your push, and you know that your push will come good 80% of the time. You can't get pwned by someone who knows how to toy with your pyschology, you can't get scared into making the wrong bet.

Every time someone goes all-in pre-flop when you have aces, you should thank the lord for the opporutnity to take their stack.

[BrokeSucca]

I have the same question but for a different reason. I can't get called. Should I try a lower raise, but still big enough to drive off most of the field, then just AI. I mean I got AA 3 time in 10 orbits and AI all three, you would have thought they would have thought me bluffing by the third.

[biondino]

Say you have AA but don't get the chance to go all-in - you put out a bet of 6xBB utg and get called. THEN you have to play the flop, but even in this case you can't just wait and see if they have a set - you HAVE to be aggressive, maybe a 2xpot bet regardless of the flop and see if you can take it down there and then. At this point, you have 2 cards (plus, of course, chance of two pair/straight/flush) which can improve your hand - odds are your opponent has more. So you want to get the win ASAP.

In this case you have to battle with an opponent who could mentally get the better of you. This simply isn't a factor when you're both AI.

[Ivory]

but my original question was that i knew 100% that he had a high pocket pair, not king queen, jack queen or anything else, so the only cards that could beat me would be a k, q or j. if none of those fell on the flop i would have a huge advantage....

edit: lol even more huge than 80%

[Ivory]

I have the same question but for a different reason. I can't get called. Should I try a lower raise, but still big enough to drive off most of the field, then just AI. I mean I got AA 3 time in 10 orbits and AI all three, you would have thought they would have thought me bluffing by the third.

easy, if they have you pegged as a rock start raising preflop with garbage and if it comes ace high, king high or queen high, bet at it like you have ace,king, or queen with a good kicker when they fold show your garbage... a few of these and your good hands get paid of alot more

edit: just dont commit your whole stack to this lol

[Ivory]

i know this might seem silly and pointless but i got burned and was just trying to think of a way to decrease the chance of it happening, even if i did come across as an idiot.

[Demiparadigm]

A K,Q or J will come on the flop just over 50% of the time.
If the flop comes J high, and you bet, and get raised, are you going to fold?

[Ivory]

wouldnt it be closer to 33%?

52 cards

- 3 community cards
- 12 cards dealt to each player

leaves 35 cards 4, kings , 4 queens and 4 jacks 35 /12 = aprx 3 -1

and to answer your question no i wouldnt fold and if he had jacks i'd get burned, but if the flop came up all blanks i go all in theres a huge chance he still calls and my odds of being destacked are even less.

i guess my point is it gives you a choice, with a good read if you know your opponent does certain things with kings or queens or jacks, you might be able to get away. even though your still a huge favourite to win you can still lose...

[biondino]

Ivory, you're getting your figures wrong. You can't take out the cards dealt to other players, you have to assume they are still to be dealt as you don't know what they are - but you can take out the cards dealt to you and, in this case, dealt to him as we know he has JJ, QQ or KK.

Therefore, there are ten Jack, Queens and Kings left out of 48 cards to be dealt. That means there is approx a 10 in 48 chance of them will be dealt on each of the three cards on the flop, which equates to roughly 30/47 or 63% chance you will see one on the flop.

In your last sentence are you arguing that you're going all in in any case?

Ivory, the problem is this: if he definitely has JJ, QQ or KK, then there is a 33% chance that if a J, Q or K hits he will have made a set, and a 67% chance that he will not. But you can't know which, and if he is smart his betting will not give this away.

But a bigger issue here is opportunity cost - that, if he has QQ, and the flop comes 35K, say, and you bet the pot or more (as you should) then he may fold. This means you win a small pot when, had you gone all in pre-flop and been called, you would almost certainly have won a huge pot.

Poker is about making the odds work for you. If you have AA and you can get someone to go all in against you pre-flop it is NEVER the wrong move, ever ever ever.

[Ivory]

are you sure thats right? im not taking out specific cards, just the number that is left to be dealt..... i understand about the missed opportunity if it comes king high and he folds but if it comes king high and he goes all in anyway...what does that say?
i might not win his stack all of the time but i might avoid losing mine some of the time.

i never meant to make it sound like it was the wrong move, i know that it isn't. but what i was trying to say is "is there a way to decrease the chance of going all in against an opponent with a high pocket pair that has hit a set"

[biondino]

What you're doing is saying there are 35 cards left to be dealt but all 10 remaining jacks, queen and kings left to be dealt - this is clearly unlikely to be true, and the only way you can accurately workout the odds is by taking EVERY unknown card into consideration, which is the 48 cards that aren't your AA and aren't his KK or QQ or JJ. You know for a fact that in these 48 cards there are 10 jacks, queens and kings, so these figures have to be the basis of your calculations.

There is another problem with your supposition. It's possible that someone who hits a set of kings on the flop will go all in, but I certainly wouldn't unless I had a read on my opponent that told me he'd call regardless. So he hits his set and slowplays, and you obligingly call/raise to at least the turn (hey, might as well bet the turn too) and he destacks you anyway.

Furthermore, if he did go all-in here it would confuse me rather than clarifying things. Does he have KK - or 55, 33, K5, A5, KA? A flush draw, a straight draw? With half of these hands I'm ahead, the other half I'm not - I could push, I could fold, but all of a sudden I lose my confidence. What you can be sure of is that your 80% lead is in tatters.

[lowBoy]

Ivory, you suffered a bad beat with AA if you pushed preflop and got called with a lower pocket pair.

If you're staring at rockets and you're pretty sure you can get someone to call your all-in preflop, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PUSH YOUR CHIPS IN NOW NOW NOW!!!!

A lower pair has around a %20 chance of winning (at worst, your opponent has 67s or 78s for a %27 chance of winning). You push 5 times with your opponent holding any pocket pair, here's a typical result over time:

You: $80 Opp: $80
1) You win $80
2) You win $80
3) You win $80
4) You win $80
5) You lose $80

For a net profit of $240. You're wayyyy ahead here. Poker isn't about one hand's results, it's about the theory and pushing every little edge you have against your opponents who will hopefully make more mistakes than you.

[EricE]

Do Not Get Wrapped Up In The Outcome.

In order to learn good poker you have to turn off your regular learning mechanism. You cannot learn as you normally do by trying things and adjusting by what the outcome was. In this case you got burned by going AI PF with AA. You lost, normal learning would dictate that you shouldn’t go AI PF with AA but that is totally wrong. 80% chance of winning is unheard of in poker. Take it when you can, every time.