Five hold'em starting hands that need warning labels

In Texas Hold’em, there are monster starting hands (aces and kings), garbage starting hands (10-3, 8-2), speculative starting hands (67 suited, 44), and then there are a few hands that look great, but quite often leave you broke. It doesn’t mean you can’t win big pots with them; sometimes you will. But getting involved with these five shady starting hands can be dangerous, especially if you’re still relatively inexperienced. I’m not saying that you should always fold these hands preflop (sometimes you should raise with them), but as if you take these cards into action, proceed with caution, especially when you’re playing out of position. If it comes to calling a raise preflop, depending on where’re your sitting, who’s in the hand, and how many chips you have, folding may be the best move.

JJ

It is no accident that the nickname for jacks is “fishhooks.” It’s a nice looking hand when you peel back your hole cards and see two jacks staring back at you. Preflop, only three hands are stronger: AA, KK, and QQ. Some rate JJ a little behind AK. However you look at it, it’s a top-five starting hand: a strong, powerful big pair. So what’s wrong with jacks? The biggest mistake a lot of players make is getting carried away with jacks preflop. It’s a strong hand, but it’s not a powerhouse. Jacks are like the Buffalo Bills or the Utah Jazz in the 1990s — strong, but rarely good enough to win when it matters most. Often, you see a hand when there’s a preflop bet, a raise, a re-raise, an all-in, and a call. It’s not unusual to see jacks turned over in this kind of preflop arms raise, and most often, they’re up against AA, KK, or QQ, against which the jacks will only win about one in five times. If up against AK or AQ, the jacks are a slight favorite – barely better than a coin flip. In short, the jacks wind up a massive underdog to three likely hands, and almost even money against AK or AQ. And yet I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve witnessed players (myself included, tragically) get their entire stacks in the middle of the table with JJ, almost always against a stronger hand. Go ahead and play your jacks; just don’t pretend they’re aces. Sometimes you need to let them go.

KQ

King-Queen looks like a monster hand, especially if it’s suited. Just look at them: the king and the queen! Surely they rule over the table! Not so much, actually. KQ will get a lot of action from AK and AQ, not to mention KK and QQ. If you pair your king or queen on the flop, especially if you’re out of position, you’re in a tricky spot if you bet and someone raises you. Let's say you find KhQh under the gun at a nine-handed $1/$2 no-limit table table and raise it to $12. And then suppose you get called by three players: one in middle position, one late, and one on the button. If the flop comes Q-10-2 rainbow, what do you do? You're first to act, and have no idea what to expect from the three players who called your raise. If you check and there's a bet and a call, what then? What if instead of checking, you bet $50, and someone raises? Now what? How much do you love your royal couple now? Your best hope with KQ, most often, is to get into a pot with some dope playing a king or queen with a weaker kicker. But if the pot gets big, it often means you’re up against something better than top pair, good kicker. KQ is a great hand to play or raise in late position, but if you're in early position, or facing a pre-flop reraise, KQ starts to shrivel up in value. Toss it and wait for a better hand.

AK

Yep, I went there. Ace King is a monster hand. You’d be crazy to be unhappy to see it when you peeked at your cards. Of course, the problem with Ace-King is that, like jacks, people can get a little carried away with it. The nicknames for his hand tell the story: “Anna Kournikova” (looks better than it plays)… “Walking Back to Houston” (gamblers who overplay AK wind up walking home broke)… “Big Slick” (slippery hand you can lose your stack with). Ace-King is a great hand, as long as you can be disciplined enough to let it go when it doesn’t improve; a lot of players play AK like a monster made hand. You should play AK strong preflop, but when the flop comes 5-7-9 or T-8-7, then what? A lot of players can’t help but bet big again, even when they miss with big slick. Worse, if they pair their ace or their king, they often ignore boards with glaring flush and straight draws on them, and refuse to fold their hand, even the betting and action at the table suggests that top pair isn’t going to be enough to win.

27

Seven-deuce is the worst starting hand in hold’em. So why is it on this list? A lot of players love to get cute with “the hammer” and bet or raise with it so that they can show down a monster bluff if they can get someone to fold. The popularity of High Stakes Poker introduced many recreational players to the “seven deuce rule” which says that if you win a hand with 7-2, everyone at the table has to pay you some amount, usually a big blind. As people tried to imitate this in their home games, lots more people got caught up in the recklessness of going crazy with this hand, and bad things can happen. Sometimes, VERY bad things can happen getting cute with seven deuce. Case in point:

AJ

Imagine you’re at a bar on a Friday night, well after midnight. Across the room you see a very attractive woman who looks a lot like Jennifer Aniston. She looks at you and smiles seductively. You approach. As you get closer, you notice that she’s a little drunk and wobbly. She has scratches on her neck, car hair all over black skirt, and what looks like blood stains on her shoes. As you say hello, she lifts her drink and you notice that her knuckles are tattooed with the letters “R-E-B-E-L”. Sure, she might be a perfectly decent, caring, thoughtful woman who just happened to drink a little too much that night, had a car accident in the morning, and once got carried away with some friends who wandered into a tattoo parlor… but just to be safe, going home with her probably isn’t a good idea. If do you, don’t be surprised if you wind up missing your wallet or your kidney the next morning.

What’s the point of this story? Every time I look down and see Ace Jack, I feel like I’m looking at that shady woman at the bar. If you’re feeling reckless enough, maybe you ignore the warning signs and hang out with her; but most often, you’re going to regret ever saying hello.

Friends from my home game know well my seething hatred for Ace Jack. It’s a train wreck waiting to happen almost any time you play it. If you play AJ and flop an Ace, you easily could be dominated by AK or AQ. Worse, you’re crushed by AA or JJ. If you flop something like J-10-5, whoopee, you’ve got top pair! You might still be crushed by KK, QQ, JJ, TT, or 55. You might hope to flop a draw, but most draws you hit with AJ will be gutshots. Your dream flop with AJ is something like J-J-K or A-J-3. AJ suited gives you more possibilities, but even that is pretty rare. Most often, when you play ace jack and hit the flop, you’re making decisions about what to do with top pair, good kicker. If you’re out of position and someone raises you, you’ve given yourself a tough decision.

So there you go: five hands that could be harmful to your poker health. Play them if you want. Go all in with them if you want to prove to your opponents that you can't be bullied. But if and when you lose a big pile of chips overplaying these hands, just remember: you were warned.