What do you do when in doubt of a winner hand? I have played pair of aces so sure of my cards being the best hand, only to discover I lost to a pair of 2s which by luck gets another 2 on the river.

Originally Posted by lilunicorn

What do you do when in doubt of a winner hand? I have played pair of aces so sure of my cards being the best hand, only to discover I lost to a pair of 2s which by luck gets another 2 on the river.

Unfortunately that happens occasionally.

I would probably also pay the player with a set of deuces.

Most of the time you can have confidence to bet bet shove with AA in your pocket.

That is provided you have isolated to one opponent.

It sucks - but it shouldn't happen too often.

Don't let this experience cause you to be "gunshy" with your AA next time.

Good luck !

Originally Posted by lilunicorn

What do you do when in doubt of a winner hand? I have played pair of aces so sure of my cards being the best hand, only to discover I lost to a pair of 2s which by luck gets another 2 on the river.

Just now I lost AA vs J8o in spin and go. He went all in and got straight, classic. For me, AA lost in 2 cases of 5, so that really happens very often.

Had to find this thread so you can see the responses....

https://www.cardschat.com/forum/bad-beats-vents-71/i-have...raight-434076/

I think AA has way more advantages in tournament poker as one advances in skill, for instance using it as a river check..watch the tables expressions at the end of this hand with AA as she tossed them on the table, just one of the coolest hands I’ve ever seen play, the whole table had no clue what she was holding after this play lol (she used the AA to set up future hands to be disguised), classic..along with the perfect timing and compete focus, just awesome. And yeah took home $103,400 This is amazing poker, perfect posture with timing (no tells) perfect bet sizing, perfect psychology reading other players. Perfect playing of cards..AA is just another hand, but so many get overly excited (including myself) whenever I get it. There is more I can talk about with this video in terms of amazing poker, but just wanted to highlight those areas for now, especially that play with AA.
Scroll to 18:00 to see the AA hand played. Highly recommend anyone watching entire video if playing live games, this way of playing can obviously be very profitable!

You Tube

I don't pay attention to rare moments in poker. In order to have less such moments, it is better not to throw AA pair into all-in, but to enter with a big raise. Not less than 4BB.

Originally Posted by lilunicorn

What do you do when in doubt of a winner hand? I have played pair of aces so sure of my cards being the best hand, only to discover I lost to a pair of 2s which by luck gets another 2 on the river.

my advice to you is to play premium hands different raise three to four times and if re-raised shove with monsters, don't limp call or limp raise, you can try that out

that happens more than you imagine, the last time I had AA was in a spin n gold of natural8 I go all in and they answered with 2-5 if some of them go all in with those cards, but hey lost

this happens periodically because aces are just a pair, albeit the highest, so if you did everything right, don't worry!

They are only variance, not all the time you will win with AA to compensate for the variance you have to put volume and move your hand to the next

Such thing is that it's good.

Please don't worry about it one by one.

If You're worrying about it, you aren't accustomed to a professional poker player at all.

I was at a table Saturday where pocket Aces busted 4 times in a row in a Limit game, including mine. Won't ever stop me from playing them again in the future though .

aces are losing! very often because of our self-confidence! we're letting our opponent look at too many cards!

When I play AA, I usually bet between 4 to 5 the BB to limit the field (don't offer good pot odds to call), I never slowplay aces, they will get cracked if the flop is appealing to too many other hands.

Raising will 'usually' get you to two callers at most (ideally you want to be heads up), and then you have to feel out if you have the best hand from there. I can't tell you how many times I see a flop that is all same suit and the AA then shoves (or tries to bluff) (feeling way too overconfident because they think AA is invisible) only to get called by a flush or someone chasing some other straight draw.

Board texture is everything, playing after the flop is where the real skill in poker comes into play. (and ironically many hands do not even make it to showdown if playing against skilled players)

I think shoving AA is pretty silly (early) in tournament poker, considering the objective is to survive the tournament. I would shove AA later in a tournament as the blinds and antes will eliminate you if you don't make bolder moves, but early in a tournament is just gambling in my opinion. There are factors to consider if I shove AA, such as stacks, how many are in the pot, player tendencies etc, how big are the blinds/antes.
Many will call with something like AK suited, KK, QQ and even JJ (which is super risky)...people even call any pocket pair lol. So trips are very possible if you shove AA against players that overvalue their whole card or chase their flush or straight draws.

Here is a good read on percentages with AA
https://pokerfortress.com/odds-of-winning/

I do however alter my bet sizing so people can't put me on exact hands with strength. I will sometimes raise 5bb even 6bb with garbage hands just because I have a feel I can take the pot right there with garbage hands against certain players Which is not even a real bluff, because a real bluff has to tell some kind of story or you have at least some chance of hitting a hand lol

My method could be incorrect, but I am happy with those results instead of simply shoving with AA like I am playing bingo or the lottery lol.

You had the entire Board to be able to beat the player to the river, so the stakes were not impressive, or the villain dragged the draw

No one is immune to the bad beat.

Originally Posted by lilunicorn

What do you do when in doubt of a winner hand? I have played pair of aces so sure of my cards being the best hand, only to discover I lost to a pair of 2s which by luck gets another 2 on the river.

Well, first of all, as more people stated, nobody is immune to a bad beat.
But what we can do is to play better!
There some missing information like position, chip stacks, etc...but I do have some questions:

Did you raise pre-flop with pocket rockets? You should raise pre-flop to eliminate players.
Did you c-bet after the flop? You have an overpair by now, should've put more pressure on your opponent.
What was your bet sizing? Did you bet too small/cheap so it was easy to call?
What were the flop and turn cards? This is important for your decision making, all cards are overcards for deuces, so if you had bet strong enough by now, it would've been difficult for deuces to call and see the river.

For deuces to see the river, means the guy either checked or called you all the way until the river card...so there's probably some adjustments you can make to avoid that.