AJo, KJo, KQo, and JQo, the 4 biggest money wasters at micro

[Brian]

Hi Gravy_Smoothie,

If you raise with AJo, and it folds out A5o, are you happy that he folded?

I almost always open-raise with AJo. But at a loose table with many family pots like the ones me454 described, then I am probably just going to limp. While you are giving up some EV up front (you certainly gain when you raise with AJ and a hand like A9 calls you), keeping the pot small actually does a lot to help you win it when you do Flop something.

When I am thinking about whether or not to open-raise with this hand, I am not thinking about if I'm in UTG, or UTG+1, etc. I am thinking about what type of table I am sitting at and what effect my raise will have.

-Brian

[umdpoker]

yeah man. this is also the reason people call raises with a3o. "but what if ace and three hit flop? then those evil ak holders will pay me off!" lol.

[el_grande]

That's funny, my poker tracker stats show positive cashflow for all 4 of those hands. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] (KJ is just barely making money for me, but the others are in the top 20)

[MrBlini]

Approximately 14,000 micro hands / Approximately 14,000 low-limit hands

AJo: top 30 / top 20
ATo: marginally profitable / top 30

KQo: top 30 / marginally unprofitable
KJo: marginally unprofitable / marginally profitable
KTo: unprofitable / top 20

QJo: top 20 / marginally unprofitable
QTo: top 20 / top 30

JTo: unprofitable / top 20

I think these do bear out that all three of {AJo, KQo, QJo} may be reasonably profitable at micro-limits. KJo is difficult to make money with. There aren't enough samples here to draw strong conclusions (about 135 of each hand).

The only big money-wasting unsuited hands for me in the paint at micro-limits have been KTo and JTo. Overall, these are marginal.

[MicroBob]

they are worthwhile hands....IF you don't take them too far. if a tight opponent shows strength then you are faced with some tough decisions about check-calling or even folding if you suspect your kicker isn't cutting it.

just got p-tracker a couple weeks ago. after 3000 hands my 2 biggest losers are KTo and AQo. KTs and QTo are also in my top-10 losers.
some bad luck in there every once in awhile....but it's a real eye-opener that i should probably be more careful when playing these hands that are always on the border of potentially strong / potentially garbage.
i know i have it in me.....on the other side, 4 of my top 11 winningest hands are ATs, QJo, AJs, ATo.

some of these stats are bound to even out as i get more hands in there AND i find the right balance of aggressiveness/muckability.
i would encourage everyone to specifically watch the stats on these potential trouble hands. it is very easy to play them wrong.

they can be winning hands ONLY if you know when to throw them away.

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
this is why u play AJ


[/ QUOTE ]

You had a dominated hand that got hit incredibly hard by the board. Whoo hoo. Hell, I'm sure players could show us hands where their 7-2 offs made boats and took down huge pots. But would you post them as examples of why you should play 7-2 off?

Correct play isn't determined by the results of the hand. Phill Helmuth once posted a hand where his significant other flopped the nut boat and was beaten by a runner runner royal flush. I don't remember the precisely, but he calculated the odds of her losing after the flop at over 900-1 against. She lost a ton of money on the hand, but it'd be hard to say that she played it incorrectly.

Now your suited A-J may have given you the proper equity to call the raise--but if you'd known you were up against A-K it would have been absolutely incorrect to call. Certainly a miracle board isn't a good example of why one should play a hand. Any 2 cards can win in hold em. We know that already. Heck I've seen 10-2 suited make quad 2's. I'm still not playing that hand....

--Zetack

[PokerNoob]

The wonderful thing about suitedness is that when it comes into play, i.e. you've made a flush, you have a nut or near nut hand that beats all the fishy two pair, straights, etc. that your top pair nice kicker might lose to.

[Nottom]

[ QUOTE ]
I am pretty sure that AJo is a much better hand than KQo mainly due to the showdown value of Ace high. This is especially important in shorthanded pots. Their other pros and cons pretty much cancel each other out. After 80k hands in Poker Tracker, AJo is doing much better for me than KQo, but it is a pretty small sample size.


[/ QUOTE ]

As the games get tighter or shorthanded I definately agree, but A-high has such little value in a typical loose game that I really don't consider it a big factor. I personally feel more comfortable pounding away with KQ then with AJ, but they are both pretty close.

[Nottom]

FWIW here are my 2/4 & 3/6 stats for these hands (since I restarted my Pokertracker DB).

Hand --- # of occurances --- EV (in BB/hand)
AJo --- 123 --- 0.36
KQo --- 125 --- 0.55
KJo --- 117 --- 0.28
QJo --- 117 --- 0.29