Poker Articles

The Not-So-Great Ace-Queen Debate
By Andy Glazer

A lot of the books that teach hold 'em to beginning and intermediate players try to clump starting hands into groups ("Category 1, Category 2, Category A, Category B," etc.). While this is almost certainly a useful teaching tool for those who are getting started and are trying to assimilate a large quantity of information all at once, after you have played for a while, it becomes clear that the hand groupings really offer very little practical help.

For example, many "groupings" list A-A and J-J in the same category, and while we've all heard poker players gripe about getting aces cracked, no sane, experienced player would contend for a moment that these two hands play similarly, or have similar expectations. The number of differences varies depending on the kind of game you're playing (for example, the jacks have almost no chance of winning in games where a lot of people see the flop, unless they flop a set, but they play pretty strongly short-handed), but there very clearly are very big differences.

Indeed, the more you play hold 'em, the more you're likely to realize that each and every hand has a unique aspect to it. Again, I say this NOT to attack the writers who help beginners with hand groupings, because I think those hand groupings play a useful role in getting players started… kind of like training wheels are useful for someone learning to ride a bicycle. But just as training wheels would slow and impede an experienced bike rider, so do the hand groupings impede an experienced hold 'em player.

The sooner you can move away from thinking of hands in terms of categories, and towards assembling a personal database of experience into the unique characteristic of each starting hand, the better. A good way to assemble this data is to ask yourself some questions:

1. Does this hand play better multi-handed, or heads-up?
2. How "position sensitive" is the hand?
3. Is it a "drawing hand" or a made hand?
4. What are this hand's strengths?
5. What are this hand's weaknesses/troubles?

To show you how to apply this questioning process to a specific hand, let's look at J-Q. J-Q is certainly a better multi-way hand than it is a heads-up hand, is very position sensitive (for the same reason) and is a drawing hand (for similar reasons). Its main strength is that it makes a fair number of straights, and even more important, when it does make a straight, it tends to make one on a hand where someone else will have something pretty good (that is, with a board of A-K-10, you run a very good chance of finding someone who owns what will turn out to be an expensive two pair), so you will get paid off well when you hit your hand.

The weakness and trouble is that when you only sort of hit your hand-for example, with a flop like A-Q-4 or even J-3-2, you stand an excellent chance of coming in second, which of course is the ultimate poker disaster. If you understand the nature of J-Q, playing it only in positions where you can capitalize on its strengths and with the willingness to throw it away where it is weak, you know a lot more than if you think of it as a group 5 hand.

One of the most interesting hands, and one of the most important to break away from "category" thinking on is, I think, Ace-Queen. I'm not sure I've every come across a hand quite as "game-sensitive," and one that is as deceiving.

Although most writers do put A-Q in a separate "category" from A-K, many do group A-Q suited with A-K, and the two play very differently, especially as you move up the poker ladder.

In very low limit games, where players tend to get involved with ace-rag a lot, A-Q is a pretty good hand. In these games, you will get a lot of action from players holding inferior aces; you may even get raised by people holding A-J or A-10. A-Q can be very profitable here.

But as poker games get tougher, A-Q becomes a real "trouble" hand. Let's discuss it, and then see how an application of the five questions might have helped us figure this out.

The first thing to realize is that in tougher games, you will be facing ace-rag very little. The only aces you're likely to run into are A-K, A-Q, A-J, and A-10, and the players with A-J and A-10 aren't going to give you much action if an ace flops. On the other hand, if you're in there against A-K, you're probably going to lose a lot (unless you're savvy enough not to give much action).

With A-K, you always have top pair, top kicker if you flop something. Even if you're up against something like Q-Q, you have an excellent chance to escape. With A-Q, you can flop top pair with a "trouble" kicker, or a "vulnerable" top pair. For example, if the flop comes Q-J-4, you are vulnerable to someone hanging around with K-10, any suited king, or, heaven help you, someone who started with KK. You also hold only one overcard to QQ.

In other words, when you hold A-Q, you are very vulnerable to kings. "So what?" the novice might say, "there are only four kings out of the 52 cards." True enough, there are only four of them… but their strength means that these cards are very likely to be held in someone's hand. Just as when you are holding KK and get that sort of doomed feeling when an ace flops, so too must you be very concerned anytime you hold A-Q and a king hits the board. People don't hold onto kings as long, or as irrationally, as they hold onto aces, but they do hold them.

That said, how does a look at the questions help us?

1. Does this hand play better multi-handed, or heads-up?
2. How "position sensitive" is the hand?
3. Is it a "drawing hand" or a made hand?
4. What are this hand's strengths?
5. What are this hand's weaknesses/troubles?

1) Do we want to play this hand multi-way, or heads-up? Hard to answer. You certainly like playing it multi-way when the board looks something like K-J-10, but a lot of the other flops offer trouble. If you think about it heads-up, it's an underdog to almost any pair (2-2 is worse than people think), and a monstrous underdog to A-K. So it's hard to see a clear answer, and that means you'll be confronted with a lot of tricky situations at the table.

2 & 3) Is it position sensitive? Well, all hands are to some extent, but drawing hands (and A-Q counts as one, as does pretty much any non-pair) are more position sensitive than made hands. If you come in early and someone shows strength behind you, you're left guessing for the rest of the hand if you're up against A-K.

4) A-Q's two strengths are its superiority over ace-rag, and the big pots you are likely to rake in when you make a straight with it (it's pretty decent when you make aces and queens, too). But in tough games, you won't face ace-rag that much, and won't be in big multi-way pots when you hit your straight.

5) The main weakness of this hand is it's trouble with the male court card, the king. Because kings turn up so often, this is a pretty serious weakness. The other problem is that on the hands where you face a lot of action (when someone else holds AA, KK, QQ or AK), you're in a LOT of trouble.

Lots of people are fond of saying that pocket aces tend to win small pots or lose big ones. That perception has some basis in reality, although rockets win a lot of big pots too. But the "win small or lose big" phenomenon is most definitely true of A-Q.

By the way… in one of those strange phenomena that helps convince me there is a lot more going on in the world than I think… I had already conceived the concept for this article, and was in the midst of writing it, while I was playing some hold 'em on-line. I caught A-Q seven times in about 45 minutes as I was writing! Nothing happened to change my mind (even though this was one of those low stakes games where I could expect action from people with worse aces)… the only time I won was when I made two pair.

What's that old drinking saying… whisky on beer, nothing to fear, beer on whisky, very risky? I think we have a poker equivalent here: "Ace and king, the bell will ring, Ace and queen, your chips will grow lean."

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