Bullets

A pair of Aces.

The best starting hand in a game of Texas Hold-em poker. Or is it?

The beauty of this game is that any starting hand can win. 7-2 off is statistically the worst hand in poker but of course it can beat bullets (also known as ‘Pocket Rockets’ or simply ‘Aces’).

So what is the strategy to play a pair of Aces in your hole cards?

As the best starting hand, basic poker strategy tells you that you should raise pre-flop. Why do that? Because as statistically the best hand, you will want to ‘scare off’ opponents who have weaker hands. Let’s say you just call the big blind with your pair of aces, then two 7’s come out on the Flop. Failing to raise pre-flop means that the player with 7-2 off got to limp in (or maybe even join the hand without putting in any chips if they were in the big blind position) and now that player has flopped trips 7’s (three of a kind, a very good hand which beats your pair of Aces). Had you raised pre-flop then the player with 7-2 off would be likely to fold.

How big should you raise?

As the best hand you might think it’s obvious, raise as much as you can. The problem with this is if you raise too much then you have basically telegraphed that you have a premium hand and then there is always the chance that the entire table will fold meaning you have got very little value out of your pocket rockets, just the blinds.

Raise too little (or nothing) and you could be letting people in who you should really have scared off.

So the answer is it depends – it depends upon your style of play which people will be taking into account as they watch every action you take in the game – if you are a big bluffer and often make big bets with nothing at all, in this case, that kind of loose play actually works in your favour because when you bet big with your Aces it could easily be read as another bluff (in fact, it could well be that in this case, raising really big is more effective than raising quite big or raising just a little).

Ideally you want to be scaring off everyone with weak hands (in case they get lucky) and narrowing the field to just a few players who also have good cards just not as good as yours. The ideal situation with bullets is to be playing against another player, or another few players who think they have the best hand, except you do. All kinds of things can happen from here. For the moment your Aces are winning. Let’s say we have a player with a pair of Kings who bets big pre-flop (as they should, a pair of Kings is a great hand, the 2nd best starting hand). Obviously you should call that, even better, you should raise it (again with the caveat that this tells them you are either bluffing, you didn’t ‘read’ from their raise how good the hand they’re representing is or you have a better hand, telegraphing your Aces) – but what if you bet first? Should you?

You can also attempt to ‘slow play’ your Aces, knowing if you don’t do the normal thing (bet/raise to scare off weaker hands), then you are giving less information away, deliberately keeping more people in the hand and taking a chance on extracting more value from the hand if the board cards don’t go against you.

Despite being the best starting hand, with pocket aces you’ll usually win a small pot or lose a big one, so beware of troublesome boards and have the discipline it takes to drop the bullets when they’ve clearly been busted.

So you see, it is all very nuanced and for a simple game can get quite complex with a lot of strategy involved. What you should do and how you should play this hand depends upon all of the following factors and more:

• your style of play
• how you’ve played so far this game
• how you’ve played in the past
• how well your opponents know you and your style of play
• how well you’re doing in the current game – i.e. how many chips you have/how big your ‘stack’ is
• your position in the game (i.e. more or les chips than other players in the hand), the rhythm of the game
• the momentum you have in the game
• the momentum other players in this hand have in the game & the current moment
• the ‘type’ of players you’re up against (aggressive/passive/tight/loose)
• the position of the different ‘types’ of players left in the hand relative to yours (e.g. does the really aggressive player act before you or after you)
• the position of the different hands relative to yours (is the player you’ve put on the best hand before or after you, the worst hand…)
• how well you know the players you’re up against
• the type of game (fixed limit, pot limit, no limit, cash game, tournament…)
• whether there are re-buys or not (which could influence not only your play but also that of all the other players)
• whether you have re-buys left and how many
• whether other players have re-buys left and how many
• which stage of the game you’re in & how big the blinds are
• what kind of strategy you want to adopt
• what you want to ‘represent’ in this moment of the game (is there ever a time you might want to deliberately play a hand badly?)
• how much risk you want to take
• your mood
• what round of betting you’re in
• other players actions
• the timing and tempo of other players actions
• other players ‘tells’
• the list goes on…

Yes, literally how you play and how you should play really does depend upon all of those things and more and all of those things and more will influence the play in every hand and every game whether you are aware of it or not.

That is what makes poker such an interesting and fun game.

Very, very easy to learn, difficult to master, huge fun to try.

Too much lingo in this post? Just check out our Glossary of Poker Terms if there are any terms above you don’t understand.