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Caught in a Trap With a Treacherous Queen
Published: 2005-10-08
 By JAMES McMANUS
Published: October 8, 2005
Three columns ago, we looked at A-K, and this week I'd like to talk about an even trickier hand. A-Q may look almost as playable, even as raise-worthy, as A-K, yet being that single pip lower makes it a much weaker starting hand. This is especially true in no-limit hold 'em, in which each pot you enter provides a golden opportunity to lose all your chips. If your kicker determines who wins the vast majority of pots when an ace hits the board, it's good to remember that close counts in hand grenades and horseshoes and love, but not poker.
A-Q often turns out to be what is called a trouble or trap hand. This means that the bigger a pot gets, the more likely you are to be drawing almost dead, but the harder it will be to fold, particularly when an ace or two appears on the board, or a king and a queen. The hand is even dangerous when the board is queen high, because if your opponent holds queens, kings or aces, your goose will be thoroughly cooked.
It's for reasons like these that T. J. Cloutier and others recommend folding A-Q in the first five positions, and playing it cautiously as you move closer to the button. "If somebody raises, what do you do with this hand?" Cloutier asks rhetorically in his blue book, "Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold 'Em." The answer is obvious: fold. "When you move in on them," he says elsewhere, "there are a lot of players who will call a raise for all their chips with a hand like A-Q. They're not good players, but they are out there."
In his useful if absurdly bragging primer "Play Poker Like the Pros," Phil Hellmuth puts A-Q in the same category with small pairs, while rating A-K closer in value to 9's, 10's and jacks. He advises even tight beginners to take a flop with A-Q, but as cheaply as possible. "They are hands worth one raise before the flop, or even worth making the first raise yourself."
In "Super System 2," Doyle Brunson says that A-K is his favorite starting hand, A-Q his least favorite. This is why Brunson is probably the only player in the world with two hands named for him: 10-2 because he won two World Series of Poker championships while holding it, and A-Q because, as he writes, "I try never to play this hand."
I wish I had taken his tacit advice when I was lucky enough to make the final table of the 2000 World Series. On Hand 9, in the big blind, I found the A-Q of clubs and got ready to raise. Three players ahead of me folded, but Hasan Habib, in the small blind, raised all-in right in front of me. Now at a full table, suited A-Q is a much better hand to raise than to call with, but five-handed, it can fairly be called a monster. I had about $525,000 to Habib's $415,000. I'd also put Habib on a steal.
It was that passage from Cloutier - whose right elbow happened to be brushing my left one - that stuck in my craw: there are a lot of players who will call a raise for all of their chips with a hand like A-Q. They're not good players, but they are out there. Yet I didn't think Habib had a better hand.
When I finally said, "Call," Habib turned over an ace and a 4, both of hearts. Delirious with joy, I flipped up my suited A-Q. Only the three remaining 4's or a flurry of hearts could beat me, though I still had to endure the flop of Habib's and my life: a 9, then a 6, then a king, all of spades. So far, so fantastic. Dead to a 4, Habib groaned, shook his head. Unless the next two cards were both spades, every other card in the deck would give me the $970,000 pot.
The crowd was bellowing dozens of things, but all I could hear were Habib's fans pleading for 4's. Even so, I was confident I was going to win not just this pot, but also the tournament. One and a half million bucks. The gold bracelet. I'd be poker's new heavyweight champion.
My faith seemed confirmed by the 5 of diamonds on the turn. Close to a 4, I silently gloated, but no suck-out cigar. I gleefully calculated the odds of a pot-splitting flush: zilch! Nada! Zero!
From the way Habib was holding his right arm, I could tell he was getting ready to shake my hand. I actually felt sorry for the guy. I had won my $10,000 seat eight days earlier when he and I were heads-up in a one-table satellite, and this would be the second time I'd beaten him out of serious money. So when the river card flashed as the - what!? - 4 of clubs, I reeled in stunned silence, even though a chorus of curses and 4's was bouncing around in my skull.
Three hands later I found an A-2 and moved in for $96,000. Steve Kaufman called and showed me A-Q, and this time Brunson held up. A few months after that, Habib kindly gave me a tour of the house he had bought in Los Angeles, partly with the proceeds of finishing fourth instead of fifth, where I'd finished. I am welcome in that house, or at his place in Las Vegas, anytime I happen to be in the neighborhood.
Think that was brutal? At the same 2000 final table, after everyone else had been eliminated, Cloutier fought his way back from a 13-to-1 chip deficit to pull almost even with Chris (Jesus) Ferguson. Holding A-Q, Cloutier enticed Ferguson to go all-in with A-9, and a fatal 9 fell on the river. At that table at least, Cloutier and I both should have listened to Brunson.
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Sometimes, the game is maddening
Published: 2005-10-07
 OK, PHIL, NO more sour grapes! You're in the penthouse suite at the Radisson in beautiful Aruba. All of your intructional material, including your poker books and tips calendars, are flying off the shelves. You have nine World Series of Poker (WSOP) titles.
Why, then, do you have to act like a jerk after taking a bad beat? Why leap out of your chair, with your arms flailing, and utter, "What the bleep is going on here?" And then ask your opponent, "How could you have played this hand so poorly?"
Once more, I'm embarrassed by my own conduct, the more so as this is the UltimateBet.com World Poker Tour (UB-WPT) event in Aruba, and I'm a UB ambassador. I should have said, "Nice hand, sir," and calmly walk away from the table. I should have shown the class that a WSOP champion ought to show. But I am, after all, the poker brat (though not necessarily proud of it).
This, then, is the hand that eliminated me, and it set me off. With the blinds at $150-$300, I called $300 holding 5s-4s, a player behind me, whom I previously had announced to the table was "unbluffable" raised it $800 to $1,100 to go. Everyone else folded, and I thought, "I should fold too, but if I hit this hand, then I will get paid off because this guy will call me with weak hands, just as he has been doing all day long."
So I called because I felt Unbluffable would pay me off if I hit my hand. The flop came down Kd-5c-5h, and now I checked with my trip fives. Unbluffable bet $1,500, and it was my turn to act. I thought to myself, "Raise it up, for a few reasons." First, if Unbluffable has a king, then he will give you all of his chips. Second, if he has a pocket pair, you do not want him to hit his card because you merely called him on the flop. Calling him here would be giving him, in effect, a free card.
So after seeing that I had $5,125 left, I decided that a $1,500 minimum raise might lure him into the pot. The other option was to move all-in, calling his $1,500 bet, and raising it up $3,625. I felt that moving all-in might scare him off, since that move would show extreme strength. So I announced, "Raise it up $1,500 more," and threw $3,000 into the pot. Unbluffable called me, and the Qs came off the deck.
I hesitated for a moment, for effect, and bet my last $2,125. Unbluffable immediately said, "I call," without putting any chips into the pot, which I took to be a bad sign. Sure enough, he flipped up pocket queens, which on the flop was an extremely weak hand, but now - after he hit that miracle queen - was an extremely strong hand. I had been more than a 10-to-1 favorite on the flop! The only way I could lose was if he hit a queen. And worse, since I had only $2,125 left, and I knew he was calling that much on the next bet no matter what, I had lost a $13,000 pot as a 10-to-1 favorite!
That's when I went a bit crazy. All the way to Aruba to lose - in this way!
OK, Phil, for real, no more sour grapes!
With a board of K-5-5, queens are:
A) a 4-to-1 underdog
B) a 7-to-1 underdog
C) even money (you hit it or you don't!)
D) a 10-to-1 underdog
Answer: D.
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