Playing Aces in Early Position

Playing Aces in early position is not an easy task and is commonly missed played. When you're in position it's much easier to extract the most money from your opponents and to make your opponents make costly mistakes. I'm going to discuss some situations where you should raise preflop and do the dreaded call raise with AA in early position.

I say dreaded because, any professional player will tell you that call raising with AA in early position will not only give away your hand, but will not be as profitable in the long run. The main problem with limping in with Aces is that you're inviting everyone else to come into the pot for the minimum and only to hope for a raise somewhere down the table. With a limped pot 5 ways and the flop comes 3 rags you will have no valid information to know if your AA is good. AA is most optimal played against 1 or 2 callers, against 5 different hands it will be unlikely that your AA will hold up to the river.

Play your aces at Full Tilt Poker and check our online poker bonus page.

Now let's say you get your raise from the Button and you re-raise. Against a solid player he will instantly know you're huge and will be more likely to lay down his hand. However, this play against a bad player will throw him off and be more likely to call or even push with a hand like AK. So yes, there is a time when the call raise can be the right play. But lets talk about the benefits of raising with your AA first.

There are a lot more benefits with raising your AA in early position then limping. First lets start with how you create a bigger pot. Ex. You are playing a 1/2 NL Live game and dealt AA UTG, you raise to $10, and get 3 cold calls from middle position, then the cut off or button looks down and sees a big hand like KK, AK,or QQ. Now with position and this quality of hand he or she will be looking at re-raising your $10 bet. A solid raise here will be about $30 to $40 more.

Now lets add up the pot, 3 cold calls plus your raise will be $40, now with the re-raise from the button the pot will be $80. Now when the action comes back you will have a decision to make. You can either re-raise or smooth call it and disguise the strength of your hand. However, if you smooth called it and got a raise and you re-raised it the pot won't be nearly $80 because it won't have any of the dead money from the cold calls.

The only time I will tend to do the call raise with Aces in early position is if I'm in a really wild cash game with a lot of inexperienced players. I have executed this play and had the donkey say, “I never saw that coming, that was a great play.” Then the solid player to my left was shaking his head in disbelief that the call raised worked and I raked in the donkeys stack.

So what it comes down to is you have to know how to play your table. 9 out of 10 times the call raise will be the wrong play to do with Aces in early position. But don't be afraid to have this weapon in your poker tool box.

Aidan Woodfine