Lesson: domination

Sadly not chicks with whips, which would be fun, but an important concept in poker, which it's worth understanding before moving on to starting hands.

There are two reasons that we start with understanding hands you can end up with, rather than with hands you begin with. One is that not knowing what beats what is such a severe handicap that you must rectify it. The other is that understanding that hand values are relative is important in poker.

AA is the best starting hand. Everything else is drawing to beat it preflop. But when the flop comes three of a black suit, you have red aces, and half the table is going nuts with betting, your AA is junk. Even before the flop, the relative value of hands depends a lot on what hands they can make. (Even more so in games such as Omaha, where starting values are closer but how well your hand will play postflop is crucial.)

You'd often rather be in a hand with QJs than with K7o. Okay, the king high hand has greater starting value. But QJs makes many more straights and flushes. Importantly -- and we noted this in the lesson about hand rankings -- using both cards to make a hand will tend to make your hands stronger. On a TKAr board, QJs makes the nuts, and no one else is likely to have it. On a 9TJQr board, K7 does not make the nuts (AK does), and anyone else with a K at least "chops" (splits the pot) with you. On a 5689r board though, you are only beaten by T7, which is on the whole an unlikely hand for anyone outside the blinds to have. The point is, hand value is relative: if others are unlikely to have hands that beat you, your hand is strong.

Now imagine you have AJ. This is a reasonably good starting hand (not as good as most donkeys think though). Why? Not because it can make some strong straights, because it rarely will. But because if you flop top pair with it, you will either have TPTK or TP with a jack kicker, which will often be best.

But imagine that the guy in the hand with you has AQ. Now if you flop an ace, you have dogshit. You must hit your jack to beat the guy. You have three "outs" to do that (there are three jacks in the deck that will make two pair for you and beat his TPQK). AQ dominates AJ. Formally, if you have fewer than three outs preflop against another hand, that hand dominates you.

(For simplicity's sake, we might write that AQ > AJ. The greater than sign just means "beats". There isn't a symbol for "dominates".)

Some hands are very prone to domination. KJ is a good example. It's a hand many beginners overrate, but think. When you hit your hand, and someone gives you action, are you going to be winning or losing? Well, sometimes they will have hands you dominate, like QJ/KT. But if the action is heavy, you are often up against KQ/AK/AJ, all hands people like to play. You are also dominated by JJ and KK, and of course by AA, which dominates all other starting hands. Note that bigger pairs dominate smaller pairs because the smaller pair has only two outs to beat the bigger one. That puts you in terrible "shape" (we say you're in bad shape if your hand is "way behind" another hand or range; in good shape if you are "way ahead" of another hand or range).

Note that although AK beats 72, it doesn't dominate it. 72 can win against AK by hitting one of six cards in the deck. Indeed, you are better off having 72 vs AK than you are having AQ! You'd generally consider AQ a strong hand, but do you see how that changes depending on what the other guy has?

Try to avoid domination. How? Don't call raises with hands that can be "easily dominated". If an early raiser is "tight" (does not play many hands), do not call with AJ. His "range" (the cards he is likely to have) includes AK-AQ, but not hands you in turn dominate like AT-. You don't want to play AJ against this range, because you have to get lucky to beat him. Against some players, you could "outplay" them postflop (use your superior skills and handreading ability to bluff them off their better hand) but there's not much scope for that in STTs. Don't call large raises with small pairs. You will sometimes be ahead, but not much. And when you're behind, you're dominated, and will rarely catch up.

Having understood that hand strength is relative and changes on each street, and that position in a list is not the whole story, we can move onto starting hands.

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Actually, quick note about another phenomenon to be aware of (I will write more about it when we discuss implied odds and reverse implied odds): reverse domination. Imagine that you hold AQ and the flop comes 963r. Someone bets small. You might call. You have six outs to beat top pair (three aces and three queens) and often they'll be "good" (will actually make you the best hand; outs do not always make you a winner, and sometimes you must discount them for various reasons: we'll talk about that later, but not in great detail, because, frankly, you could play STTs at a low limit without ever calculating pot odds). But what is the other guy has Q9 or A9. Now you have only three outs, but do not know it! You had the guy dominated before the flop, but now he dominates you. This is reverse domination. It's one good reason not to call small bets with "overcards" (cards bigger than the flop). Some of the time, the other guy will have paired his rag kicker but will have a big card to go with it. This is particularly true with aces. More usually, the flop would be A93r, so you have TPQK, a decent hand, but are reverse dominated by A9/A3. There's nothing to be done in those cases. Against most players, you are "going broke" (putting all your chips in and risking getting busted) in this spot.