Axo in Position

luckylucky

I decided to have a look back through Pokertracker to see what my leaks were and I think I have found one.

This is a bitmap of hands played from cutoff+1 to button.

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There's a clear gap between A8o and A7o, I'm obviously much more inclined to try to take the blinds when I have A8 or A9o and it's a slight loss for me at the minute, but not enough info to go on. So I'm thinking this is not horrible.

A7o and below is where the real clear loss is occuring. I haven't played many of these type of hands but when I did it's not pretty . I haven't played any A2o. It appears A3 to A5o I've just played a handful of times, and A6 and A7o I've gambled with a few times. All of those low ace hands have unsurprisingly returned a loss.

Taken in isolation getting involved preflop with A7o and lower is clearly a losing proposition for me.

I think we need to be careful when isolating hand in Pokertracker though, yes these hands are loss earners for me without any doubt. But, I'm not nuts, honest I'm not :rolleyes: . So my reason for getting involved here probably had something to do with the fact that I might have been quiet in the game and didn't want to seem like a rock for when I finally got dealt KK or something.

Basically what I'm getting at then is there ever a point to playing these sort of hands on occasion for metagame purposes or do playing suited connectors suffice for those kinda puposes?

btw the AKo loss is down to one major hand when I had a brainstorm back in January and played in a 20-40 nl game

Primewise

I would much rather raise with suited connectors than weak aces.


If you flop an Ace you then have a difficult decisions to make throughout the hand. You stand to win small pots and lose big ones. You’ll rarely improve to a monster.


However with suited connectors you can flop a disguisted draw / straight. Your implied odds are much greater.



As an aside, I see that you have a 97% PFR for AKo. Obviously you are 3betting every time with AK. Is 4betting standard with AK in 6max? What about full ring?

luckylucky

Primewise wrote:

I would much rather raise with suited connectors than weak aces.

Without a doubt, note I'm not raising much with Axo at all and only ever in position. Maybe it's time for me to just fully cut it out though.

Primewise wrote:

As an aside, I see that you have a 97% PFR for AKo. Obviously you are 3betting every time with AK. Is 4betting standard with AK in 6max? What about full ring?

I'm not sure If I 3 bet every time with AKo, though I probably do a lot of the time, I wouldn't say 4betting it in 6max is automatic and even less automatic in full-ring.

Ste05

I'll raise alot of hands in position, if folded to me, I'll usually raise most A's, the thing to remember is it's a pretty sh1t hand so I would only ever try to pick up the blinds or the pot with a cont. bet, or play a small pot.

Primewise wrote:

If you flop an Ace you then have a difficult decisions to make throughout the hand. You stand to win small pots and lose big ones. You’ll rarely improve to a monster.

You don't really have all that difficult decision's IMO, I'm never playing a big pot with these hands, so I can never lose a big pot, they are perfect for small pots, if an A flops, I'll represent it whether I have it or not, then I'll just play the rest of the hand accordingly, if the pot ends up being a big one, it's because I've decided to bluff my opponent not because I've gone mad and put my stack in with TPNK.

I think I raise something like 35% of my hands on the Button and I'd think most A's would fit into this range. The thing to remember is it's not a hand to be playing big pots with even if you flop 2 pair, because if someone is willing to put alot of money into a pot containing an A, he can usually beat AK, never mind Ax.

Although I prefer to play low suited or unsuited gappers and the likes than A rag, and so although I don't have my PT stats, I could be wrong with how often I play them, my thinking usually is I can represent any A that flops so I don't actually need to have one, so in ways I actually prefer not to have one, if you know what I mean. But certainly the thing to remember is not to be playing big pots with those hands.

luckylucky

I'd be interested to know how it said you were doing Ste with the Axo according to PT. For me the only position where it has showed a profit is on the button and even then I have folded the lower Axos.

This is the 1st time in a while, I've given my PT stats a good going over, have found a few other leaks since posting this earlier that need shoring up, an exercise well worth doing I think.

Ste05

Well I know that I fold them in basically every position except for the button and possibly Cut-Off, [my VPiP UTG is about 10-13 rising to about 35 on the Buton (my overall VPiP is about 26)] I fold A10o in early position most of the time. I'll take a look tonight and let you know,

How do you sort it by position, I probably know when I look at my PT, (I assume it's in filters) but just incase I can't figure it out later, I haven't done a complete PT analysis of my game in a good while.

luckylucky

Ste05 wrote:

How do you sort it by position, I probably know when I look at my PT, (I assume it's in filters) but just incase I can't figure it out later, I haven't done a complete PT analysis of my game in a good while.

In the filters section of general info, there's an option for positions off the button, if you want cutoff +1 to button you select Less than or Equal to 2, I also narrowed it down to hands with between 5 and 10 players so it wouldn't get skewed by any heads up or 3 way play.

Ste05

I forgot about this last night, here's my Axo stats on the Button and CO.