I’m on the final table of a Full Tilt Poker $11 Knockout MTT. I’m 6th in chips, with about 23 big blinds. I’m on the button, and grin as I look down at two red kings. A player in middle position (who has me covered) raises to three times the big blind. The action folds to me and I ship my entire stack in without hesitation. The initial raiser calls and flips A
5. The flop comes J-9-6 with no clubs. Safe so far. The turn is a Q. Still good. The river delivers the only card I didn’t want to see, an Ace... thearthurdog finishes the tournament in 9th place, $67 has been credited to your account. Meh….I want to be really clear: this is not a tale of woe about bad beats. But, I admit the curse of A-x has brought me unstuck at critical points in MTTs more times than I can remember. In fact, I would go as far to say that my bankroll would be substantially bigger if that damn ace hadn’t come in a few deep and important spots.
It used to drive me crazy until I actually sat down and worked out the mathematics of why that ace keeps hitting the table. Combine the math with a real understanding of the way people play an ace pre-flop in lower buy-in MTTs, and now I am at a point where my K-K gets cracked and I don’t blame the curse; it’s just how it is. Allow me to explain.
I play lower buy-in MTTs and play most of them these days at Titan and Party (smaller field sizes which suit my schedule a lot better). Both of these sites have 10-handed tables, which actually gives the curse of A-x a little more impact.
Let’s imagine we are playing a $6 MTT at Party Poker. 20 cards are dealt pre-flop. Which means that on average there are 1.54 aces dealt each time. Of course there are occasions when there are 1, 2, 3, 4 or none. For the purposes of our example let’s say there is 1 (which mathematically is likely to occur often).
Now imagine that you have any good pocket pair that is not A-A (let’s say J-J). You have a stack of about 20 big blinds. The action folds to you in middle position and you raise the standard three times the big blind. The button calls without hesitation. The flop comes T 6 5 rainbow. You bet around half the pot. The button calls again. The turn is a 2. Perfect. You ship it in. The button calls and flips his A-7. You can hardly believe your luck, until (you guessed it) the river comes an A ending your tournament life. How did this happen? There are three major influencing factors here.
Firstly, you have to understand the way many people play aces pre-flop in low buy-in MTTs. They simply cannot fold them. I think a lot of this comes down to that fact that these players do not have a good understanding of the rank order of starting hands and have ‘any hand with an ace’ way up at the top of the list. In their minds then, it would be foolish to fold such a strong hand pre-flop.
The second part of this phenomenon is that when they don’t hit their flop, they honestly believe that A high is good. Players in this situation will rationalize their play by convincing themselves that you are on a draw (despite the absence of a draw heavy board), have an ace with a weaker kicker, or a weaker pair they still have a chance of beating if (when?) the ace comes. The fact that they are up against a good overpair rarely enters their mind. If they are, well, they have still got two more chances of hitting that ace right?
If you don’t think some players behave like this with an ace in their hand, ask anyone who has put in any volume in low buy-in MTTs.
The third part of this scenario is the mathematics behind another ace hitting the table. Now in our example, let's assume there were still 3 aces in the deck. 3 aces out of a possible 32 cards. Let’s examine the probabilities for this specific scenario when there are still three cards out that could pair our opponent's ace:
• Flop card 1 = 3/32 or 9.4%
• Flop card 2 = 3/31 or 9.6%
• Flop card 3 = 3/30 or 10%
• Turn card = 3/29 or 10.3%
• River card = 3/28 or 10.7%
When I worked that out I instantly saw why A-x seemed to be popping my big pairs so often. In our example, it is roughly a 1 in 10 shot at an A on each of 5 cards. No wonder some players remember the times they’ve spiked an Ace, and are looking for any reason to try again.
Combine those probabilities with the previously examined tendency of bad players falling in love with A-x, and it starts to become clear. There is no curse, no bad-beat algorithm crushing your big pairs and your dreams. There’s just the tendencies of bad players, and simple probability. The beats might not be much easier to take, mind you, but I felt better after seeing the numbers and rationalizing what’s going on. I hope you do too.
* thearthurdog Arthur Russell is a post-grad university student in Queensland, Australia who enjoys online poker in his free time.More Articles by thearthurdog
How Does Poker Fit into Your Life? Jul 12, 2009
Adjusting to Micro Stakes Online Poker Games May 19, 2009
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