AA vs KK – Is There Any Way to Avoid Losing Your Stack?

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One of the most frustrating situations in poker has to be getting all your chips in with AA against KK.

I had AA, raised preflop, and got a re-raise from another player. We eventually got all the money in before the flop.

Villain showed KK.

The flop and turn looked safe, but a king came on the river.

I lost a huge portion of my tournament stack.

Obviously I am never folding AA preflop in this situation, but I am curious how other players deal with these coolers mentally.

Do you immediately move on to the next hand, or does a cooler like this affect your decisions for the next few hands?
 
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I thought, you were talking about running KK into AA, which is a classic cooler. If you have AA, then obviously you have the easiest decision in the world preflop, and it does not even matter, what your opponent has, since AA is always a 4:1 favourite or better. And yes sometimes AA will lose all-in preflop to KK, 33 or JTs, or AK will lose all-in preflop to AQ. Thats just part of the game and really should not affect your decisions for future hands.
 
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I think it will always affect you to some extent. We are human, and when you lose a huge pot in a situation like AA vs KK, it's difficult to just forget about it immediately. But I think you have to understand what happens when you go all-in pre-flop. AA is obviously a huge favorite against KK, but once the money is in, your AA is still just a pair. Any pocket pair can hit a set on the flop, and the possibility of that happening is still there. The important thing is not to let the result of that hand change how you play the next ones. You made the right decision by getting the money in with AA, and sometimes the river is simply going to be cruel. If you start playing differently because you're angry or trying to win those chips back, the cooler can end up costing you even more. ️
 
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I think it’s one of those situations where it’s very difficult for KK not to lose money. Depending on the tournament and the moment, I’ll fold KK in a preflop all-in situation, but many times, if the opponent goes all-in preflop, it’s hard to fold.
 
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You just have to accept it and move on. It doesn't matter what you lose to, AA all in pre is likely to lose 1 in 5 times, thats quite a lot of times over many many evenings of poker that you will lose with AA.....one thing for me especially if it is early on or a small buy in, then I just try to be thankful its not happened on an FT or a game that is massively above my usual buy in!
 
hoachec said:
Do you immediately move on to the next hand, or does a cooler like this affect your decisions for the next few hands?
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It shouldn't matter. The idea is that there will be an equal amount of times where you will have the KK and will cooler a player who is holding AA in that type of situation. If it's affecting decisions, that means there are tilt issues in play and maybe it's time to reflect on why you care so much. Are you risking too much in the game? Are your expectations too high? Ideally you want to be able to just play poker and chill without caring for coolers like this.
 
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getting stacks in pre while holding AA and seeing villain has KK is not a frustrating situation for me. Actually anytime I can get stacks in pre while holding AA, it is cause for celebration. How the cards fall after is irrelevant. If you can't a solid grasp on this you'll a) have a terrible time playing b) you'll likely do sh1tty
'working on your game' includes working on this stuff. Learn to accept it... that is poker.
 
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Yeah you can’t control what happens when you get all in with AA vs KK. Your mathematically supposed to loose 20% of the time and you will. So it’s just a hand, we move on. If we didn’t go broke and we are still in then whatever, move on and get ready for the next hand. Character really shows in these moments, when we win and stack chips with the best hand that’s easy. When we loose when we got all in with the best hand will really show what kind of player we are. Can we move on, can we put this behind us and get ready for the next hand.
 
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hoachec said:
One of the most frustrating situations in poker has to be getting all your chips in with AA against KK.

I had AA, raised preflop, and got a re-raise from another player. We eventually got all the money in before the flop.

Villain showed KK.

The flop and turn looked safe, but a king came on the river.

I lost a huge portion of my tournament stack.

Obviously I am never folding AA preflop in this situation, but I am curious how other players deal with these coolers mentally.

Do you immediately move on to the next hand, or does a cooler like this affect your decisions for the next few hands?
Click to expand...
If you can learn how not to get affected by winning a huge pot (say if you were having those Kings), then it’s very easy to stay away mentally from a negative outcome!
Poker is like Tennis - we all have seen Rafael Nadal win with 0.1 BB of his stack left!
In a match against Davind Nalbandian, he had lost the first set 3-6, was about to lose the second set but saved 5 match points and won that set 7-6!
Nadal killed the third set 6-0!
Eventually the scoreline read Nadal def. Nalbandian 3–6, 7–6(5), 6–0!
He could’ve given up so easily staring at defeat for five ****ing times! But each and every time his mindset got him out!
So if you don’t let any hand (point) affect your mind at any point, then you can win any tournament (match), hence keep on grinding which is my point!
 
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KeyPatience said:
If you can learn how not to get affected by winning a huge pot (say if you were having those Kings), then it’s very easy to stay away mentally from a negative outcome!
Poker is like Tennis - we all have seen Rafael Nadal win with 0.1 BB of his stack left!
In a match against Davind Nalbandian, he had lost the first set 3-6, was about to lose the second set but saved 5 match points and won that set 7-6!
Nadal killed the third set 6-0!
Eventually the scoreline read Nadal def. Nalbandian 3–6, 7–6(5), 6–0!
He could’ve given up so easily staring at defeat for five ****ing times! But each and every time his mindset got him out!
So if you don’t let any hand (point) affect your mind at any point, then you can win any tournament (match), hence keep on grinding which is my point!
Click to expand...
That's match-fixing, you can't compare it like that
 
In this situation only pokergod can do something if it's allin
Else normal call 3 or 4 bet
U may options
 
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hoachec said:
That's match-fixing, you can't compare it like that
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Rafael Nadal fixing matches! Bro you’re a legend! 😂
On one side you’ve liked my reply whereas on the other side you’re saying that it cannot be compared like that!
Anyway, that’s my opinion and you have every right to disagree! ✌🏼
 
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AA vs KK is probably the coolest cooler to take logically but the worst to emotionally cope with 😂, so I try to think of it as a single hand and move on right away. The problem is that the next decision is already affected by the previous one, and you have a tendency to chase the money lost, trying to get it back. If it was a good spot to push, then you have no control over what happens next; take a deep breath, forget about the river and play the next hand as if nothing happened. 🃏
 
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