Ace-Rag

by: Lou Krieger©

“How do you play ace-rag?” That’s a question you hear time after time. From beginners and skillful, time-tested tournament pros to big cash game players too—they all ask the same question. Sometimes it’s asked rhetorically, other times with a deadly serious desire to know with 100 percent certainty how to play this hand.

Beginners love ace-rag. Any hand with an ace is a big, playable hand to many beginners. If they learned their poker by watching televised poker tournaments, they love it even more. After all, every week they watch big-name pros go all-in with ace-rag. What they don’t realize, of course, is that these pros are playing at the final table of a tournament. They may even be short-stacked, and ace rag is probably the best hand they can hope for. They need to make a stand, and any hand containing an ace is generally a big enough hand to make that stand right now.

It can take quite a while to learn that the final stages of a no-limit hold’em tournament are vastly different than a fixed-limit cash-game, and that some of those differences are reflected in the hands you ought to be playing in certain situations. Nevertheless, many players weaned on televised poker tournaments love any ace and would probably be willing to play an ace without any side card at all if given the chance.

Players who have been around the block a few times will tell you how to play ace rag in two short, simple words: “Ditch it!” They never play ace-rag, and if you ask them why they’ll tell you tale after tale of the times they flopped top pair only to be out-kicked by an opponent with an ace and a better side card.

Certain hands are much more positionally dependant than others, and ace-rag falls onto the high end of the positionally dependent spectrum. You can play a pocket pair of aces or kings from any position and take all the heat other players throw at you. And why not? You know you have the best hand, except for that oh-so-rare instance when you have a pair of kings and your opponent has pocket aces.

But ace-rag is not like that at all. Whether or not ace-rag is playable depends on the situation and the setting. If you’re in a short-handed game and no one else has entered the pot when you’re last or even next-to-last to act in the betting order, ace-rag is a monster. Raise with it.

Some major differences between playing ace-rag in a fixed-limit game and no-limit games become apparent as you play both forms of poker. When the betting is fixed-limit, and you bet with ace-rag, you stand to be called by opponents who hold all sorts of hands. You might be called by another ace with a low kicker, as well as hands such as K-Q, K-J, K-T, Q-J, Q-t, J-T and even hands such as T-9 suited will frequently call. Because the betting is a prescribed limits, the amount they can lose or win is predefined.

But if you’re playing no-limit, you’re likely to make a somewhat bigger pet, one that’s probably in the neighborhood of three to four times the big blind, so it represents a heavier investment for any opponent who’s thinking of chasing you down. Not only that, anyone who calls your initial raise has to consider the possibility that you might bet bigger on subsequent betting rounds, and that if he calls you now, his entire stack might be in jeopardy later on in the hand. After all, your opponent doesn’t know you have ace-rag. In his mind you might have A-K, A-A, or a whole host of hands that beats whatever he’s holding.

That’s the crux of the difference between fixed-limit and no-limit play. The no-limit player who makes the same loose calls as he might in a fixed-limit game stands a chance of being punished much more severely for his lack of judgment. And because there are fewer callers when someone bets in a no-limit game, it may not support playing speculative hands that need to improve to win.

Regardless of your position in the betting order, if you’re playing in a tournament without many chips left and figure to lose more of them when the blinds come around again, you have to make a stand sooner rather than later. At that point ace-rag is probably as good a hand as you can hope for so you might as well push all your chips toward the center of the pot. If you’re short-stacked in a fixed-limit tournament and can’t go all-in because the betting is constrained by the game’s structure, you need to bet or raise and take a stand with an ace-rag too.

While a hand like A-6 isn’t necessarily a better when you have only a few chips left than when you have a boatload of chips, you simply can’t afford to wait. Anytime your chip count is less than eight to ten times the big blind, you’re shortstacked. When you are, you have to look for a situation where you can put most or all your chips in play. You might lose, but the alternative is to sit and wait for a big hand, and without many hands before the blinds hit you again, you might wind up bleeding to death without seeing a good starting hand that you’d want to make a stand with.

Desperate circumstances require desperate measures, and being short stacked with ace-rag is a situation that demands an attempt to steal the blinds or double up by going in with ace-rag and winning the pot. If you’re in a fixed-limit game, you need to bet in hopes of stealing the blinds or winning as much as you can if you’re called with the best hand.

Ace-rag does not lend itself to formulaic play. Much of poker boils down to how well you can represent certain hands in a given situations, and ace-rag is one of those hands that can be played any number of ways. You can toss it away without a second thought, push all-in with it in a no-limit tournament, raise in a fixed-limit game or tournament, or call. It all depends. Mostly it depends on situations, but that’s not entire story. Knowledge of your opponents’ playing styles, their perception of you, your understanding of their expectation for this hand, or for the entire tournament, all come into play.

Beginners give ace-rag a bad rap because they play it to death. They overplay it and get burned. They play it out of position and under the wrong circumstances and lose with it. Here’s why:

Ace-rag is not A-K. With A-K you have about one chance in three of flopping at least one ace or one king, and if you do it means you have top pair with the very best possible kicker. If you play ace-rag, you’ll also flop a pair at least one-third of the time. But if you catch an ace on the flop there’s a pretty good chance that anyone else with an ace has a better kicker and you are generally looking to pair your kicker if you hope to win. The trouble with that, is you’re now involved in a hand in which you have to hit a three-outer to win, and the chances of improving on either the turn or the river with only three outs are 12.5 percent, which makes you a 7-to-1 underdog in this situation.

If the flop hits your rag, you’ll have a pair, but because your kicker was weak, you probably don’t have the best pair right now. But you’re a little better off than you are if you and an opponent with a better kicker both pair your ace. If you improve your pair to trips you’ll probably win, and you stand a good chance of winning if you pair your ace on the turn or river too. You have five outs, and chances of improving on either the turn or river are just a bit above 20 percent, which makes you just slightly better than a 4-to-1 underdog.

Regardless of how you slice it, being a 7-to-1 or a 4-to-1 underdog is no way to play winning poker.

I’ve had players tell me they are fond of playing any ace because of the chances they might flop two pair. But that’s a real long shot that figures to occur about once every fifty hands. Do the math, once every fifty hands you’re going to like the flop. The other 49 times you’re probably not going to flop anything at all, or you’ll flop one pair and find yourself either a 7-to-1 or a 4-to-1 underdog. Players who use the “I might flop two pair” logic as justification for playing ace-rag against a large field might as well play 7-2 and 9-4 too. After all, they’ll flop two pair once every fifty hands too.

As players’ poker skills continue to grow, the scars from playing ace-rag become indelibly etched in their minds. So they tend to ditch the hand—even though it’s very playable if the situation, the images, the perceptions, and the expectations are right.

Because it can be played so many ways, ace-rag is also subject to being misplayed a great deal of the time. Some players don’t bet it strongly enough to uncover information about their opponents' hands. Some play ace-rag every chance they get, without regard for the situation or circumstance. Some are too aggressive; others are too passive. Some call with ace-rag when either raising or folding has merit, but calling does not.

As players learn poker and their skill and sophistication level increases, they begin to ditch ace-rag with regularity. This is the time in their poker careers where they tend to become quite formulaic about the hands they play and how they play them, although that doesn’t work all the time either. There are many players who reach a plateau at this level of sophistication. They develop a card-dependent strategy, apply it fairly rigidly, and while it may be successful for the games they play in, it is far from an optimal approach of blending creative poker with standard, book plays.

Until players learn to think situationally, savvy opponents will be able to read them and deduce their holdings, while they will have only the vaguest clues about where their opponent stands in a hand. That’s a prescription for defeat. When your opponent reads you well, he can deftly step out of the way whenever you figure to have the best of it, and pound you whenever his hand is better. He can also do this whenever you have a weak hand and he can represent a strong one because he has a pretty good idea where you stand. When your opponent knows you can’t call a bet or a raise, it doesn’t matter what he has. He’d going to bet, raise, or reraise and take the pot away from you.

Once a player comes through that formulaic, hand-dependent stage in his poker-playing development, he will begin to play ace-rag again, except now he’ll play it well rather than naively, as he did when he was a beginner.

He does this because he is aware and able to ask and answer questions dealing with the texture and situation of the game.