Can You?

Occasionally a player will say something that surprises me at the table. I was in a sit and go observing the player on my right as a fairly smart player. On a particular hand he limped in pre-flop. I had position and I wanted to steal the dead money in the pot. I raised and, after quite some thought, he folded . I assumed that he was just posturing, and didn’t actually have a hand. Then he asked me the strangest question: Could you beat A9?

How can I answer that? Both of us had over 2,000 chips and the blinds were 75/150. I thought about the most dominated hand I could be in with against A9 suited. I thought at the time it would be A8 off-suit with the 8 of his suit. I was apparently wrong. After checking with Cardplayer.com’s Odds Calculator I found that A2 off-suit of the suit NOT his was actually the worst hand I could be in there with. I would imagine that if I had the 2 of hearts, and he had A9 of hearts and the board showed 3 4 5 6 of hearts, then he would be out of luck, and that is where the small percentage gets lost when we don’t share a suit. I’m rambling now.

With A2 off-suit I have about a 37.5% chance of winning or tying the hand against an A9 suited. If we represented all four suits my percentage hops up to over 40%. So I have a one in three chance of beating his A9 if we both went all-in before the flop.

I don’t even remember what I had as far as cards are concerned. It didn’t really matter. Let’s say for argument’s sake that I had the 5-7 of hearts and he had the A-9 of hearts. For some reason he decides to call pre-flop out of position. I have about a 35% chance of winning without betting at this point. What types of flops can he bet into/call with? With any two hearts, any Ace, or a nine high flop, I would expect him to fire off. He might get a flop like T-7-6 or 6-7-8 with or without a heart that he would call with because of the over card and straight possibilities. With any other type of flop he would have to bluff in order to win the hand. As I said at the beginning of the post, I observed him as a good player, and realizing what he needed to flop, he made a good lay-down out of position.

What really confused me is why he would ask that question. There’s no doubt that I could beat an A9 with any two cards in the deck given the right flop and my position. That is why I raised to begin with – the high likelihood that I could take down chips pre-flop, or using my position after the flop. I answered the only way I knew how.

Of Course =)