Plus, the use of pot odds, and your fave poker hero!
DOOM OR BOOM WITH THE BIG SLICK! Probably Ace-King (The Big Slick) is the most controversial hand in poker. I’m betting more hands are won and lost with Ace-King than any other hole cards. It’s what’s fondly referred to as a “decision hand”. The great T.J. Cloutier recently busted out of a big Bellagio tournament with it in stellar style. “At the Bellagio my opponent had Ace-Three of Spades and I had Ace-with a King of Diamonds. My opponent put in a re-raise which you wouldn’t normally expect with Ace-Three but he flopped two pair, and I flopped top pair with a nut flush draw! I had a zillion outs, but I didn’t make it, so I was out. That’s poker!” And that’s the Big Slick! It’s an all too familiar story. On the other side of the fence you’ll hear from plenty of players who have won juicy pots with Ace-King, either pairing both by the river or turning in a massive Ace high straight. It’s a fifty-fifty gambler’s hand. I always play it unless everything about the table is advising me otherwise.
SIMPLE USE OF POT ODDS Most new players are intimidated even by the idea of calculating pot odds. Let me try and make the whole thing really simple and easy to use. Imagine that you have six outs on the flop. Multiply your outs by four which gives you twenty four and then take away two which leaves you with the magic number twenty two. That means that twenty two per cent of the time you are going to be the winner. It’s a simple and easy formula. Just write it down and keep it until you have it branded on your brain. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of your decision making. Let’s say I miss out landing my hand at the turn. That leaves me just one last chance of landing the hand I’m after at the river. To calculate those odds I now have to multiply my six outs by two point two (2.2) which gives me thirteen point two (13.2). Let’s round that down to a neat thirteen per cent of the time I’m going to nail my nut hand at the river. Again. Write it down until you have it firmly established as a formula you can use at a moment’s notice, because a moment is all you’ll get. Poker is all about aggression and Lady Luck but if you add a swift ability to bring pot odds into the equation as well you are all the time adding to your edge over your opponents. Over the long run your edge will define you as a winner. It’s odds on.
FAVOURITE POKER HERO It’s interesting to see the voting patterns across the web for the best poker player portrayals to make it to the silver screen. John Malkovich’s “Do you want a cookie?” performance as “Teddy-KGB” comes out on top most of the time these days, close run by Ed Norton’s classic creation of “Worm” in “Rounders” which contains my favourite line from any poker movie, “Aren’t you supposed to read us our rights?” as a table full of off-duty cops kick the crap out of him and Matt Damon.
