Calling an All In With Ace Rag
Earlier this week I was playing a tournament online and had pushed my stack of $22,000 with AQs. The blinds were at $1,000/$2,000 with a $300 ante which was high enough that I couldn’t just raise with my stack, and I was hoping to double up if I got called. Sure enough I was insta called by the big blind who had $30,000. I considered that I was against a pocket pair, AJ, AK, or KQ. No, I was happily surprised when I was called by A3 off suit. Thankfully there was no bad beat story, and I was able to double up. It was very surprising that the BB decided to call me with such a weak hand considering that I had been showing solid hands the whole tournament. The fact of the matter is this happens all the time. Someone goes all in and anyone with an ace feels obligated to call. This is a misunderstood theory.
Ace rag is not a good hand to call an all in unless someone is going all in blind. Even then, you only have one over card to whatever they are going all in with (excluding small pocket pairs with are a coin flip anyways.) You have to consider what kinds of hands your opponent will push all in with. In the best circumstances you are 57%-43% against KJ off suit. Against a pocket pair you are 30%-70%, and any bigger ace has you dominated. This does not prove to be very good odds when calling off most of your chips to someone’s all in. Even in the instances where you have someone covered by a substantial margin, the odds that they are pushing with a bigger ace is considerable. In most cases, it is not worth it. When calling an all in, you want to avoid doubling up the short stacks because they can quickly become a force at the table. You want to give yourself the best chances of taking them out and adding their chips to your stack. In the case of calling an all in with a low grade hand like A3, just fold it and wait for a better opportunity. It would be more beneficial to wait for a better hand or a better spot to take advantage of their chips.
