The question is rather straight forward, which poker hand would you rather have? Well I haven’t told you the hands yet or the situation but the game is deep stacked no-limit Texas Hold’em and the two hands in question are Qd-Qs and 7d-6d. I can almost hear you all now saying how this is a no contest and that you would take the queens any day. Well it is true that queens in theory should make more money than a suited connector…..in theory.

But there is one very large problem with big pairs, weak players overplay them in games like full-ring and end up getting all in when their hand is dominated by a bigger pair. This nightmare situation is easier to walk into with queens as you have both kings and aces as potential threats. In fact QQ is only a slight favourite against hands like AKs and AK. In full-ring poker games then these possibilities arise more frequently than what you imagine and when you get stacked while holding KK against AA or QQ against KK then it has the capacity to tilt some people.

Tilt is bad enough at the best of times but it can be absolutely fatal when you are multi-tabling. I was playing in a deep stacked NLHE game yesterday at NL50 road testing “The Vulture” system when the following hand came up. A player limped under the gun and I raised from middle position to $2.25 with K-K. The small blind three bet to $9 and the original limper shoved all in for their remaining $47. What was I to make of this? Some players would say that folding kings here is impossible and especially at this level.

While it is true that NL50 is not a level full of great poker players, they are all too aware of hand values. A limp re-raise is a powerful play at the best of times but a limp four bet all-in shove is another matter entirely. If I was new to this level then I would certainly have called with the kings but I folded them. But the small blind called and showed QQ while the UTG player had the obvious AA. Many players will be critical here of my play and calling may have been correct but in this environment based on what I had observed over many thousands of hands then calling felt wrong.

But having hands like 7-6s can prove immensely profitable in their own right and you never have a problem folding hands like these post flop if you don’t connect. But hands like KK and QQ can be really problematical if you constantly go for your entire stack in deep stacked no limit full-ring and you will come to realise this as you learn poker. In four bet pre-flop situations then you will be against AA far more than QQ when you hold KK. I have got stacked several times with KK against AA in these situations in very quick succession and it is not a pleasant experience and it really puts you to the test when you are multi-tabling.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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