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Playing A-x Suited On The Poker Flop – Flush Draw
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Suppose that an elephant has made it two bets in the second position before the flop and then a jackal in the fourth position has called the two bets. Now you call on the button with 0-0, and the big blind calls as well. The flop is 0-0-0, and the big blind checks. The elephant bets and the jackal raises. What do you do? You have flopped the "nut" (best) flush draw. If another heart comes off the deck, then you have made an ace-high flush.
This is a reasonably strong flop for your hand. With this strong draw, you'll make the flush about one-third of the time, and occasionally you may win simply by hitting your ace, so you must either call the two bets or raise it to three bets to go. My instinct in this case would be to raise. Who knows what the jackal has in this hand? He may have a flush draw or a straight draw, in which case you have him beat with your ace high at this point. Your raise may eliminate the elephant (who may have the best hand!) and get you one on one with the jackal, whom you may have beaten. The worst-case scenario for you, if you make it three bets to go, is that the elephant makes it four bets to go and you end up having to call one more bet.
In general, I recommend playing a nut-flush draw very aggressively on the flop, especially when you have position, as you do in this example. This hand all but requires that you call a bet with it on fourth street, and if it were mine I would want to put in a lot of bets on the flop and then bluff at the pot on fourth street even if a bad card comes off.
Alternatively, I'd put in a lot of bets on the flop and call down one opponent on the end with my measly ace high if there's any chance that this opponent was drawing to something as well. Sometimes the size of the pot that you create by playing the nut-flush draw aggressively will necessitate your calling on the river with merely ace high, because the size of the pot may tempt other players who are on inferior draws to make desperation bluffs at you. You win these often enough, with your ace-high river call, to justify this play.
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Playing A-x Suited On The Poker Flop – Hit It Or Fold It Part2
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Two players to my right was a jackal from Europe who was reraising everyone while holding any kind of hand. He was a real nuisance to me, because he kept reraising me and stealing all the pots that he and I were going after. In fact, he was reraising everyone at the table and outplaying us all after the flop with his big bluffs. He had played this very dangerous style to near perfection, parlaying his chips to over $65,000. I also had about $65,000 in front of me, which is a ton of chips. This jackal and I were the chip leaders at a time when the average chip stack in the tournament was less than $15,000.
Conventional wisdom at this point would suggest that neither one of us should play a big pot against the other. Why risk a boatload of chips in a single hand, when we could both just coast in to the final table with our huge stacks of chips? A cardinal sin at this point would be to get involved in a big pot with each of us holding really weak hands.
So much for conventional wisdom and cardinal sins! I soon found myself raising it to $2,000 to go before the flop with my A-7. The jackal was sitting in the big blind this hand, and he decided to reraise me by making it $8,000 to go. Perhaps he smelled my weakness and was just trying to force me out of the pot with his weak hand. He was right—I was weak—but he didn't count on the fact that I had smelled the weakness in his reraise. So I reraised it again to $20,000 to go before the flop. Again, I think the jackal smelled some weakness in me, and in any case he decided to call my $20,000 bet. Now the flop came down 0-0-[3, and he bet out $15,000. I decided that top pair was enough to allow me to move all-in against him because I thought I had the best hand. Frankly, I wasn't hoping for a call. So I moved all-in for $45,000. (I raised him $30,000!)
The jackal then called me quickly, and the next two cards to hit the board were the two worst cards I could think of! First the H came off the deck and then the H (HS&&[5]K so that the flush draw and a straight draw had both hit the board! I stared in disbelief at the board. What had I done? I had just put in $65,000 with an incredibly weak hand! I could have waited patiently for some strong hands and made the final table fairly easily. I couldn't beat anything anymore. The flush draw beat me, some straight draws beat me, a set beat me, and an overpair beat me! But he was the first guy to flip his hand faceup, and he was taking a long time to do it.
I was thinking, "Just show me your hand, and I'll leave this tournament feeling sick about my awful play." With $130,000 in the pot in a tournament where no one else had even $30,000, the winner of this one pot would have an excellent chance of winning the tournament. Finally, he flipped up his hand and said, "One pair." I stared in amazement at his hand: 7-9 off suit, which gave him a pair of sevens with a nine kicker! I had a pair of sevens with an ace kicker, and the pot was mine! My good read of this jackal paid off, and from there I cruised easily down to the final three players. My attitude quickly changed from, "Phil, you idiot, how did you let yourself get $65,000 into this pot with this hand?" to, "Phil, baby, great play, great read, well done!" Eventually, I finished in second place and collected $110,000. Here was a story illustrating how an A-7 can pay off big when you merely hit a good flop with it. But please don't try this at home.
Examples
Now it's time to move on and give you some examples of how you should play A-x suited on the flop. In general, with A-x suited, we "hit it or fold it."
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