The Legend of A-9

Some people have their favorite trash hands they like to play...within reason, of course. Harry Dixson loves him some of that 6-4 action, I've been partial to 9-7, and I know everyone has their personal favorites they like to mess around with from time to time. On the other hand, I also have a particular "least favorite" hand, and it's not one that immediately come to mind.

If anyone reading this has played at World Tavern with me over at Buckshots or at Overtyme (or even Clancy's, Hatchy's, or Airway this past week) over the last month or so, you may have noticed a recurring bit/inside joke with me regarding the hand Ace-9, and it's been interesting watching this bit evolve and spread to other WTP venues I've played at over the last few weeks.

It started innocently enough a month ago or so over at Buckshots, when Anna Kelly and I starting talking about hands that look good, but more often than not just end up getting you in trouble. Anna brought up A-Q, but I focused more on A-9 (at least from my view) as the hand that often looks good, but many times just gets you in trouble. This observation was based mainly because that was a hand that busted me out of my last 3 tournaments, but it was something I had really been picking up on recently with many other players in games, as well.

Where the discussion turned into a running gag happened during the course of play soon after that discussion started, as both Anna and I were either shoving or having to make a decision to call an all-in with A-9 in four of the next ten hands. Each time, A-9 was either folded face up, or shown by the winner of the hand after the table had folded...each time to a little more laughter as happened.

What did I get out of this? I realized pretty quickly that overplaying A-9 was (emphasis on "was") a major leak in my game. And it's pretty easy to get in trouble in these types of hands, when you think about it. For example, call someone's PFR out of position, then you flop an ace...what do you do? You can check it, but then when your initial raiser bets out, where do you stand? Do you really want to go into passive/calling station mode against someone who could have a higher kicker? Check-calling a lot of your chips away with top pair-weak kicker tends to leave bad tastes in my mouth, but that's just me.

Or, same scenario, except this time you get a 9-high rainbow flop...worth a bet, but then you see another player (let's say he's a fairly tight player) come over the top with a large (relative to the pot) raise. Could this player have limped in with a hand, like, 10-10 or another over pair, and gotten his dream flop?

Obviously, I'm not advocating open-folding this hand without thinking...I'm just arguing that calling PFR raises (especially when out of position) with this hand is going to be -EV in the long-term. Of course, any 2 cards can be playable, and before acting out a hand you have to consider your chip stack relative to the blinds, your position on the table, your position in a tournament, and the players at your table. This is an auto open-raise from the cutoff or the button, but not so much from the UTG position on a full table. Short-stacked, and open-folded to me, I'm also more than willing to shove my chips in the middle with this hand - but have to think a long time before calling off a sizable portion of my stack with it.

As the weeks have gone on, I've noticed that my A-9 hands are not costing me as many chips, and most of the time the correct decision is being made by me with this hand...but hey, none of us around these parts are perfect. If I am folding this face-up to somebody's large raise or all-in shove, I usually give a derivative of the "This hand looks really good, but is going to get me in trouble" speech before folding. I've noticed a few more players giving similar comments, which I'd like to think I had a small part in doing - it's good to see some real thinking going at the tables, rather than the "I have ace-rag, but it's suited - let's gambul!!" attitude we've all seen at WTP and charity poker rooms across the state.