Everyone knows the feeling of receiving AA: whether it’s online or live, there’s a little rush of excitement and a bit of “here we go.” But there are times when I’d rather look down to find J10, and if it’s right, even better!
If you play deepstack poker tournaments, suited jack-ten can be one of the most overlooked hands in your arsenal. Shortstack is almost useless as you won’t be asking enough to play it safely, but when you and most of your opponents are sitting on a sizeable number of big blinds it becomes a very playable hand.
Many players put J10 in the same bracket as many other suited connectors or single holes, but it beats them all for a variety of reasons.
- All straights made with both cards are the best straight, so if you get a straight on the flop, they are the best except for flushes. The same is not true for lower connectors like 67s, where you can flop the bottom end of a straight. While it’s true for all top connectors and gappers like JQ KQ and KJ, those hands don’t make as many straights as J10.
- It’s easy to get away with it: either you get a big draw or hand, or you don’t and you get out of hand. Hands like KQ and KJ are all too easy to crash into a pot with top pair and lose a lot of chips. Basically you are either winning big pots or losing small ones, always good!
- When you hit, there is usually action. With 67, you can hit a big 458 on the flop, but against opponents with two high cards, you won’t get called. However, on the AKQ flop with J10, there’s a good chance your opponent hit as well.
This ties in nicely with the last important thing to remember about J10: it’s a marginal hand and should be played as such. Using it to make moves is not a great idea as it loses some of the value of a cheap flop. What you want is a cheap multiplayer pot, just like with other speculative hands. The more players in the pot the better, for two reasons, firstly, you will get a better value to call in the first place, but more importantly, there are more people paying you as well.
You don’t just need to get a hand to win a big pot; you also need someone else to hit a slightly weaker, but still playable one. And there’s simply more of a chance of that happening with more people in the pot. And of course, if you have a straight, you know it’s the nuts, so you get your money by knowing for sure if you’re winning.
So, deepstack, against deepstack opponents, favorable position, with some players in the pot… J10 is worth a look!