How to Play Aces and Kings

Did I play this hand bad? How do you play Aces and Kings?

You played the hand just fine. The only thing to keep in mind is that the lower stakes on Replay are nothing like actual poker where people might be trying to win or have an idea of what they are doing.

I’d say until you get to the 500/1k ring or 2k/4k ring, players can do just about anything with just about any two cards. They can call with 82s or go all in preflop with anything, so it is really hard to play “correctly”. You just need to see flops and wait til you have monster hands (like sets, straights, flushes, etc.) and let them pay you off. AA becomes very vulnerable when 3 or more opponents call.

There is not really any sense to analyzing your hand too much because, as you see your opponent called huge bets with 82s and then with nothing on the flop, so your opponents could have TT or 98 or AA or 72. I like your raise pre-flop. The sizing is good for a real poker game, but at these stakes I would go even bigger because people are not folding or doing math (as you saw in this example).

Your bet on the flop was a bit too big in my opinion because it looks like you are very strong, so players might fold all worse hands (like Tx) and only continue with hands that beat you (like TT/55/77), but they can also have KK/QQ/JJ that would call. But again, clearly their ranges did not make sense (and having KK/QQ/JJ/TT) also should not make sense, so it is great that you bet as big as you did. It definitely makes sense for them to have Tx hands and to have to call at least one bet with top pair. The stack-to-pot ratio was so small (relative to the last two opponents) after all of the pre-flop calls that you want to end up all-in with a hand as strong as AA and be happy with it regardless of what your opponent shows up with.

You are doing a great job of not playing passively and getting value when people make questionable calls, so keep it up.

I play AA/KK the same way that I play almost all of my hands in most situations on Replay. I raise pre-flop and I c-bet on the flop (unless I have like top boat). Depending on how that goes, I would evaluate whether my opponent has many hands that beat me or many worse hands that I could get value from to see whether to go into showdown value mode or value betting mode.

The caveat with AA/KK is that many people here will never fold them ever. That means it can be worthwhile to see flops against these people, knowing that they only raise KK/AA and that they will never fold them when you beat them. So, if you hold one of these pairs and your stacks are deep (like 200 big blinds) you need to strongly consider folding if your opponent gets very aggressive. Maybe they are a maniac or can be overvaluing a weaker hand, but even these two best starting hands get beaten frequently, and many good players here err on the side of overfolding because most players here do not bluff often.

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I know right - when he flipped his cards over I was wondering why he called the huge bet on the flop with 8 2 :joy::joy::joy: