How A-Q Can Lose You a Lot of Money

If you’ve been sitting at the table for a while waiting for good cards to fall into your hand then A-Q is definitely an attractive prospect.  However, you should also beware of A-Q because it’s a hand that can lose you a bunch of money.  Sure A-Q is one of the top 10 hands you can receive in poker, but it’s still not A-A, K-K, Q-Q, A-K, or even J-J.

But there are some poker players who make the mistake of treating A-Q like it’s one of these hands, and so they’ll do things like play it in early position or in middle position after a pot has been raised.  Sometimes you can get away with doing this, but the majority of the time you’re going to get burned when playing A-Q out of position.

That being said, A-Q is a solid hand to play in middle or late position when you’re looking at an unraised or unopened pot.  But you’ve also got to remember that A-Q is not a hand where you’re going to be dominating other people with from the outset as it’s only a drawing hand.  Any time you’re up against A-A, K-K, Q-Q, and A-K you’re already dominated while going up against J-J is a coin flip at best.

You can get value out of an A-Q hand in certain situations though like when you’re on an extremely loose-aggressive table.  Here people will play hands that A-Q has the potential to dominate which means you can actually be ahead of some of the players who are making bets and raises.  However, you’ll want to avoid playing A-Q too much on tight, nitty tables where players are mainly sticking to premium hands that can potentially have A-Q dominated.  Just remember that the main thing is not to overvalue A-Q and treat it like a premium hand.