Are kings really king?

It's been a bit of a nothing week for me so far. I've been playing the $24 tourneys on Full Tilt and after 6 of them I've made one cash for about $38 and one for about $96. Cash games this week I've found fairly tight. It's strange how some weeks the tables seem tighter than others. I guess it's a case of continuing to grind it out. I played one table of NL200 along with my NL100 tables today. It's a very small sample so far, but I think the NL200 tables might be as soft if not softer than the NL100 tables. My theory is that most people playing live poker play NL200 live. As a rule the level of play at the NL200 live games is fairly poor. Because they play NL200 live when they decide to play online they choose the same level they play live (NL200). Of course the level of play is generally a lot higher at the same limit online so it makes for softer games at this level with these live players. People who started playing online usually start at a lower limit and work their way up, hence making the NL100 games tougher. It's only a theory and might be completely wrong, but from my play and datamining of the NL200 games I think that I should find little difference to the NL100 games. Fingers crossed.

Today's Topic: KK vs AA

A lot of No Limit players refuse to fold their KK preflop regardless of the action around them. Analyzing over 500,000 hands played at NL50 and NL100 I can say with certainty that not folding KK before the flop under any circumstances is a big mistake. Some might say that the only hand that can beat KK is AA, and what would be the odds of running into that? The odds would be roughly 1 in 24 or 4.39% of the time. So on average once every 24 times that you get KK someone else at the table will have AA. You get KK once every 220, so on average once every 5000 hand you will run into this situation of KK vs AA.

My experience has been in NL50 and NL100 games that if the pot is raised to you with KK you re-raise it and then get re-raised by either the initial raiser or another player and you are both deep stacked (more than 70BB) then unless you have notes or a read on the other player to suggest otherwise, the majority of the time you will be up against AA. It is overall an EV + decision to fold in this situation with KK. If the player you have raised, re-raises you and has less than 50BB, then because of the money already in the pot and because of their increased range of hands with less than 50BB's I have found it to be EV + to call in this situation.

So next time you're deep stacked opponent puts you all in when you are holding KK, as hard as it might be to fold those Kings, you will be making the correct decision in the long run.

Today's Link:

Brian Townsend known online as either ABA or SBRugby, has gone from playing playing .5/$1 nl holdem 2 years ago, too playing in the highest limit games available on the internet. In the last few weeks he has been on a massive downswing losing over 3 million dollars. Read all about it on his blog. Link here.