Posted by Dr Fro 3:05 PM

Last night was, by all measures, a disaster. In a 2-hour span, the following happened:

• I was all-in preflop holding KK against AA (and lost)
• I flopped middle set (7's) and he flopped top set (Queens)
• I flopped top set (Jacks) and bet. He raised all-in with an overpair (Queens) and I called. He rivered a Queen.

These were not the only ugly hands, just the ugliest. Somehow, I managed to only lose $70 on the evening, for which I am thankful. The above hands alone cost $140, so I had my fair share of successes as well.

The AA vs KK hand got me thinking a bit. When you have KK and your opponent seems very excited to get it all-in, what should be your thought process? Well if you know that he has AA, you are a 4:1 underdog, so you will want at least a 4:1 payout. But what about the possibility that he has, say, QQ or AK and is simply overplaying his hand? You'd hate to fold KK to either of these hands. So what is a good rule of thumb for when it is o.k. to call with KK? Let's assume that the bet to you is pot-sized, so you are getting 2:1 payout, meaning you want to win the hand at least 33.3% of the time to make calling a profitable play. You should call if you think that the odds of him holding AK or QQ is 11% (each) or higher. The math:

Hand...Odds to win......Likelihood to have
AA.............19%.....................75.0%
AK.............69%.....................12.5%

AK.............81%.....................12.5%

Multiply these out and add them together and you get 33.3% chance of winning.

So if you are, say, 76% sure that he has AA, it is correct to call. There are only a small number of opponents against whom I could ever be >75% sure that they have AA. People play hands like QQ, JJ, AKs super fast all the time. The above math is for a pot sized bet, but if there has been a lot of raising and if this is not a game with deep stacks (can you find a "deep stack" NL game anymore?), you will probably be facing an all-in raise that is less than the pot. Therefore, the threshold of how certain you must be that your opponent does hold AA is set even higher. Can you really tell yourself that you are, say, >85% sure that Bob has AA and fold? I can't. Not unless Bob has a mirror in back of him.

Daniel Negreanu wrote recently (no link, dig up the Houston Chronicle sports section, Thanksgiving weekend) that he has only folded KK preflop (in a cash game) once in his life. He has played a lot of poker and he is also capable of assigning high probability to the chance that his read is correct. He is a helluva good player and in his poker wisdom, he folds in this situation about once every 15 years. Since he plays poker many times more often than I do, in Fro-years (or should I say "Dawg-years"?), this is equal to once in a lifetime. So, if I never do (and I might not) fold in this situation, I may be making an unprofitable (measured in EV, not by actual results) play once in a lifetime. I can live with that.

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