How to Play POCKET ACES Like a Pro | Upswing Poker Level-Up #49

This article is a transcription of the Level-Up Podcast, hosted by Upswing VP Mike Brady with poker pro Gary Blackwood. You can watch or listen to the entire episode via the links above or read on if you prefer a written version.

Mike (00:00):

Ready to level up your strategy with pocket aces? I’m Mike Brady and I’m joined by poker pro Gary Blackwood to help you play better with the best starting hand in hold’em.

Gary (00:10):

That’s right, guys. Today we’re looking at pocket aces, whether you call them bullets, rockets, American Airlines, pocket fourteens, the batteries. We’re here to take it street by street, looking at preflop, then flop then turn to help you get max value with the best starting hand in poker.

Mike (00:26):

The batteries, I don’t know if I’ve heard that one, but I like it. Before we jump in, I want to just let you know that next week is the biggest sale of the year over on upswingpoker.com. Everything on the site, every course, every tool, and even merch is going to be 25% off. So if you’ve considered upgrading your game with a course made by a top pro, or maybe you want to get into the Lucid Poker trainer at a discount, next week is the time to get off the fence. The sale starts on Monday, November 25th and will run through the beginning of December. Now let’s dive into it starting with the most common street. Gary, how do you approach playing pocket aces preflop?

Gary (01:04):

If you’re playing with deep stacks, you should almost always play your aces aggressively pre flop. You’ll win much bigger pots on average that way. When the pot is unopened, always raise. Same goes for when you’re facing a limp. When you’re facing a raise, always three bet. It might feel tempting to get a little trappy and just call sometimes, but you’ll win more money more often by fast playing your aces. When you raise and face a three bet, you should basically always four bet your aces. Assuming stacks are a hundred big blinds or more, the pot is not big enough to justify flat calling. Yes, you might lose your customer, but for the times they continue, it is much higher EV. Some of you listening might be content to trap preflop with aces when facing a three bet or even when facing an open, and sometimes that might work out well. But in the long run, it’s much better to always three bet and always four bet your aces in a deep stack game. You’ll just win so much more money long term.

Mike (02:00):

We did an entire episode about when to slow play aces before the flop, so I recommend going and listening to that. But let’s touch on it briefly now as well. When should you slow play aces, Gary, in say, a 100 big blind deep cash game,

Gary (02:15):

So when the pot is already bloated compared to your remaining stack, you should consider slow playing your aces. With deep stacks this will most commonly happen where you’re facing a four bet. Let’s say you’re up against a decent player who’s going to have reasonably aggressive four bet ranges. You three bet with aces in position and then he four bets. We can pull up this spot in the Lucid Poker Trainer and see that the solver mainly wants to just flat call in this scenario. The reason for that is that while your opponent has some good hands like queens and kings and ace king and things like that, they’ve got a lot more middling hands like ace jack suited, ace queen offsuit, and king jack suited. You’re absolutely crushing these hands and if you shove, you’ll just force them to fold. But if you just call and they flop a decent hand like top pair or a draw or something like that, they’re likely to be forced to put in all their chips.

Mike (03:03):

There just may be one caveat. If you’re up against a not aggressive player, like a very, very tight player who only will four bet with extremely strong hands. Think of the classic old man coffee type opponent in a live game. You might be better off just shoving because they probably just have a very good hand and they’re almost certainly going to call. But even in that scenario, you can consider slow playing. When stacks are shorter by the way, you can consider slow playing aces against three bets or even single raises, and it’s for the same reason. When the pot is going to be very bloated compared to your remaining stack, it can just make sense to slow play your aces because you’re not going to have trouble getting all of your money in postflop. This usually happens when the stack-to-pot ratio is going to be around two or lower should you just call. This happens a lot in tournaments, and if you want to learn more about it, check out that slow playing aces episode we did in the past. We go over a bunch of different preflop scenarios where you might want to slow play your aces. Now let’s move on to the next street. Gary’s prepared a handful of tips for playing aces on the flop. What is your first tip?

Gary (04:11):

Okay, tip number one is to follow up your pre-flop aggression with a bet on the flop most of the time. The key is to think about how our overall range wants to play, instead of just focusing on your individual holdings, which in this case is pocket aces. Look at the board and decide if it’s a great, a good, an average, or even a bad board for you, and then go from there. If it’s a board that’s really good for you, you’ll want to bet quite often with your entire range, including pocket aces. Boards like ace eight three, king six deuce, jack jack three. These are good boards for our range in almost every scenario, so we bet our aces, whether it’s a single raised pot, a three bet pot, or a four bet pot.

Mike (04:53):

I bet you’ve got an exception plan for tip number two. What is it?

Gary (04:57):

Tip number two is to play your aces passively on boards that aren’t so great for you. There are plenty of spots where we actually don’t want to c-bet our aces, and it’s important to know what these spots look like and why we don’t want to see c-bet our aces. For example, let’s say you raise preflop and the big blind defends. Then you face a check on a low and connected flop like eight five three with two diamonds. When we look at this spot in the solver, we’ll see that our aces actually don’t do that much c-betting on this flop and on other boards we might even check back every single time. The eight five three example is very dynamic, meaning it can change drastically depending on the turn and the river. It’s also a board that very much favors our opponent with some of those turns and rivers favoring our opponent even more.

Gary (05:44):

As a result, we tend to play more passively with our best overpairs. We’ll bet our lower overpairs like pocket nines very often, but that’s because pocket nines is more vulnerable and it benefits from protection. Aces don’t benefit from protection because they don’t need any protection, so checking with it is more appealing. Generally speaking, the more dynamic, the more connected the board, the more we check with our pocket aces. If we look at six five three with two diamonds for example, we see our aces basically always checking now. It’s still a decent hand, but we certainly don’t shovel money into the pot with it. We start with a check and we see how the hand develops. If we face another check on a blank turn, then we can start betting for value. My third tip is to approach it the same way in three bet pots. Say cutoff raises, the button reraises, and the cutoff calls. On a low board, like seven four deuce with two diamonds, the button should actually not always bet with pocket aces. Checking has a few benefits. It gives your opponent the chance to catch up with the second best hand. It also strengthens your checking range, making you much tougher to play against. So if your opponent just puts you on ace king and starts blasting, you’re ready to call down.

Mike (06:57):

Great stuff there Gary. Before we wrap up, I know you’ve prepared some advice for playing pocket aces on the turn. Take it away.

Gary (07:05):

So we’re going to use our Lucid solver here to help us look at these examples. Let’s take a look at button versus big blind single raised pot scenario. Say the flop is a really disconnected king seven deuce rainbow. We c-bet on the flop very standard. The big blind calls and on almost every turn card, we are continuing to bet, continuing to build a pot. We’ve got our foot on the gas aggressively barreling with our aces. Since our opponent only called on the flop versus our bet, they will rarely have a set, they’ll rarely have two pair, so we’re very, very likely to have the best hand here. They also have a lot of hands that will call like top pair, some turn draws, so let’s keep betting and keep building the pot. Again, some of us watching this might get a little fancy and trap by checking back so we don’t lose our customer on a safe turn.

Gary (07:52):

Don’t do that on brick turns. Continue to barrel instead. You’ll just make so much more money in the long run by building pots versus the pairs and draws in your opponents range. There is one specific turn card in our example that we don’t barrel our aces on, and that’s when the king pairs. It’s not a great card for our hands specifically, so we then start to slow down with our pocket aces. That is going to lead me nicely onto my next point. Let’s be willing to take our foot off the gas at the right times. Say we raise the button with aces, the big bind defends, and we see the flop come down seven six deuce with a flush draw. As we’ve just discussed, we’re not going to c-bet our aces every single time on this type of low connected flop. But if we do decide to c-bet our aces on the flop, we need to be prepared to slow down on some of the lower turn cards that are not good for our range.

Gary (08:41):

If we look at an offsuit four, which completes some straights, completes some two pairs, our aces are now rarely going to barrel the turn, pot controlling is preferred. If we look at a board-pairing six, almost never betting. If we look at a jack, however, our aces are always betting because that’s a good card for our range. We don’t need to worry about turned two pairs and turned straights in our opponent’s range, and we get to continue to barrel. Again, great for us to take this information and use it well. Let’s be sure that we don’t overdo it and we still continue to barrel and get that value on the better turn cards for our range.

Mike (09:18):

That’s all we’ve got for you on playing pocket aces today. Go head to the table, put these tips into practice, and start making more money with that beautiful starting hand. And remember, the best time of year to invest in your poker game is almost here with the 25% off site-wide Black Friday /Cyber Monday sale happening over on Upswing Poker. Everything is 25% off. Uri Peleg’s new Poker Blueprint course, which is an amazing one for people who don’t like all that fancy terminology and poker, don’t like looking at solvers. Highly recommend checking out that course if that describes you. All of our advanced courses made by top pros, the Lucid Poker Trainer, which you’ve seen throughout this episode, the Upswing Lab, if you want to jump in there and access the eight plus years of content made by super talented players like Gary Blackwood. It’s all going to be 25% off starting next week, so head over to upswingpoker.com. That discount will automatically apply. We’re back. We’ll see you next week.