Poker Stories: All-in with Pocket Aces on the 1st Hand

Sometimes when we sit down to play poker, it seems like we just can’t catch a good hand. After folding for what seems like hours and bemoaning our bad luck, card death can either bore us to death or make us tilt.

Photo: All In Poker Podcast

Though that’s not what happened to Pokerface Ash, a popular poker vlogger, in her new video titled I'm Dealt Pocket ACES My VERY FIRST HAND & I'm ALL IN! Can I hold for a $1,000 Pot!? It’s really the stuff that poker dreams are made of, but there’s always the nightmare scenario of making a big mistake, getting outdrawn, or just getting flat-out coolered.

Here’s how the action went down.

Pre-Flop

As soon as Ash sits down at a 2/3 cash game with a $500 buy-in, she looks down at her hand to see pocket red aces: the ace of diamonds and the ace of hearts. Since she’s under the gun, she’s first to act, so she decides to raise it up to $10.

It then folds around to the cutoff, who 3-bets to $40. She’s silently jumping for joy as she anticipates playing a big pot with the best hand in all of poker.

It folds around to her, and now she has a big decision to make. Does she call to disguise her hand or raise to make the pot even bigger? She ends up bumping it up to $120, 3x the 3-bet, though she says that she thinks she should have raised to $105 instead to let her opponent continue with a wider range.

The cut-off flats and they head to the flop of a huge and growing pot.

Post-Flop

The flop brings the queen of hearts, 7 of diamonds, and 8 of diamonds. With the ace of diamonds in her hand, Ash is drawing to the nut-flush, but she still has the best hand in most cases. Basically, the only thing that could have called down her pre-flop raise and still beat her on this flop is a pair of pocket queens for a set. Ash figures he could have kings, ace-queen suited, or other similar power hands.

Since she’s out of position, she gets to start the betting, and she decides to put in $120. He raises to $275, and now she’s really wondering what he could have that he could do this make this move with. Figuring that there’s still plenty of hands she can beat, like kings or AQ, she makes the jam to go all-in. He calls the big raise and the rest of their fate is in deck’s hands.

The turn brings the 5 of hearts, a total blank, and the river reveals the Queen of clubs, making him holding a queen even more unlikely. When she flips up her hand to show the goods, he looks despondently down at his cards before tossing them in the muck. And that’s how you double up on the very first hand!