"Ace exposed" with AKo UTG+1

Raise to your normal opening size

Limp raise 😃

AKo vs. 20% is 61.1%
AQo vs. 20% is 57.6%
AQs vs. 20% is 59.7%

AKo _with a dead A_ vs. 20% is 59%

The exposed Ace doesn't affect my play in this spot, where I open limp as per my style. I may be slightly more apt to fold facing a raise from a tighter player, but otherwise will usually continue with my limp/reraise plan against looser openers.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Now look at it vs the top 20% of hands that also do not have an A.

Ignore it

The missing Ace makes your hand slightly weaker, which makes it a hand that's still easily strong enough to raise, so you raise. I don't think there's too much more to think about.

Results

Hero folded and figured he erred.

Folding AJs though.

I guess you all know that I can’t relate to the limp stuff.

Like Dan said… raise your normal size

Really hate the fold…even a limp would be better. However, don’t beat yourself up over it as folding any situation is almost never a big mistake.

This can work to your advantage if an ace flops. A guy with kings figures you’re less likely to have hit.

I’m tight, but when having a strong hand, I’m trying to play it. Want to see a flop - often willing to float CBs, need a reason to go away.

Now if it comes back to me with a 3bet and a 4bet, I’m obviously giving up.

It’s interesting to me that people drop AKo fairly easy, but with AKs (3% stronger) they’re ready to shove.

You get AKo 3x as often (this can matter a lot, depending on how you create your ranges where, you can have a lot more non-pair hands).

It's what solvers do.

Also 3% stronger is not a good way to think about it:

AKs vs. QQ is ~3.2% higher equity than AKo, which is an 8.2% improvement.
AKs vs. KK is ~4.5% higher equity, which is a 19.4% improvement.

It's more of a difference, but I'm far from sure this is a good way to think about things:

AxKy (vs. 20%-Ax): 58.6% (diff from normal: -2.5%)
AxKy dead As (vs. 20%-Ax): 55.4% (diff from normal: -3.6%)

...I guess there's a chance people will overvalue how the missing A affects their hand with A9s or whatever that they'd normally always call to our raise, but my guess is that when people snap call suited Ax hands it's not for hitting a weak top pair value. In general though I doubt you should compare your hand vs. a curated range which is bad for your hand when you have little to no reason to do so.

I'd imagine the effect is much larger than heads up hot-and-cold equity suggests. In EP of a live game in particular, your EV is going to be much more reliant on hitting a pair multiway and getting paid than checking it down unimproved and shipping a 5.5bb pot with nut A-high. And when you do whiff, having a 5 outer instead of a 6 outer will have notable effect on bluff catching and semi-bluffing EV as well.

(Interestingly, in this last example having the A dead instead of the K is arguably better for AK's hand ranking because it's still going to be the nut high hand regardless, whereas with a dead K, you'll get in a lot of spots where AK is one of the *worst* A highs to bluff catch with.)

On the other side of this coin, having 3 broadways out of the deck is also going to improve your FE for a raise, though I think we would all (correctly) intuitively say this is going to have a very small EV effect in EP of a 1/3 game.

Open folding a hand that went from the 4th nuts to like the 10th nuts is WAY overcompensating obviously (lol), but I think in general people are probably undervaluing the effect of a single dead card.

Yeh, while I didn't use a lot of words ... I was trying to frame it in way people could see the equity easily preflop with something they are familiar with and thus. not massively over/under value the effect.
So if you'd play AQs then you'd probably also want to play AKo with a dead A (probably not perfect, but unless you want to spend hours studying it's the best simple thing I know).

Ps. This effect grows slightly as you moved down but still AQo with a dead A was also close to the value of AJs.

Pps. This effect grows a lot if you have two dead As, where two dead is 3x as bad as one dead.

You get AKo 3x as often (this can matter a lot, depending on how you create your ranges where, you can have a lot more non-pair hands).

It's what solvers do.

Also 3% stronger is not a good way to think about it:

AKs vs. QQ is ~3.2% higher equity than AKo, which is an 8.2% improvement.
AKs vs. KK is ~4.5% higher equity, which is a 19.4% improvement.

It's more of a difference, but I'm far from sure this is a good way to think about things:

AxKy (vs. 20%-Ax): 58.6% (diff from normal: -2.5%)
AxKy dead As (vs. 20%-Ax): 55.4% (diff from normal: -3.6%)

...I guess there's a chance people will overvalue how the missing A affects their hand with A9s or whatever that they'd normally always call to our raise, but my guess is that when people snap call suited Ax hands it's not for hitting a weak top pair value. In general though I doubt you should compare your hand vs. a curated range which is bad for your hand when you have little to no reason to do so.[/QUO

Since instead of there being 3 As available for other players there are only 2 they are 1/3rd less likely to have an Ax then normal and knowing an A is gone are less likely to call with them. I agree removing them entirely is too much but not accounting for it at all is too little. Was really trying to point out how much missing 1 out of 6 outs effects when rival has pp.

No idea if this is correct, but I think the decreased likelihood of our hand improving is somewhat offset by the increased likelihood we'll be able to extract max value when we do improve and / or an increase in fold equity.

I think what happens is people intuitively understand that there are less combos of AK possible, which leads them to thinking that we must have more bluffs, or that we wouldn't bet AK for value at the same frequency. I also think opponents start to fold their own AX and KX combos more.

The adjustment I make is to raise bigger pre, and bet bigger post, both for value and when I'm bluffing. It's counterintuitive because the actual equity of our hand has gone down. But I think that makes the fold equity and implied odds go up.

Folding, wow I have no words.