How to Play Weak Aces

Hand Selection
February 22 2009

Playing aces with weak kickers is a common novice leak that should be eliminated from your game. It’s not like there are no situations where you should play a weak ace, but you should be selective where you do. These hands are often beaten by another ace with a better kicker, and can be costly over the run of a session. Playing hands like this to a raise, from even a moderately aggressive opponent, is not a good play. Let them go, because chances are you’ll be dominated going into the flop.

The only time it’s ok to play these types of hands is from a late position when there’s been no raising pre-flop. Bigger aces will usually raise it up, so it’s likely that you have the only ace at this point, if no one has forced the action. It’s even a good idea to raise with your weak ace from the late positions because you may very well have the best of it at this point in the hand.

In short-handed games the weak ace takes on more power. Now it’s a big hand that you should usually raise with. You can still run into a bigger ace, but the chances of that happening have greatly decreased. And if you’re getting blinded out of a tournament, the weak ace is good enough to force the action with, and will often give you a fighting chance to double up.

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