Everyone knows the feeling of receiving AA: whether 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 a fit, even better!
If you play tournament deepstack poker, jack-ten suited may be one of the most overlooked hands in your arsenal. Shortstack is almost useless, as you won’t ask for enough to play safely, but when you and most of your opponents are sitting in a sizable number of big blinds, it becomes a very playable hand.
Many players put J10 in the same bracket as many other suited connectors or unique holes, but it beats them all for a variety of reasons.
- All straights made with both cards are the best straight, so if you flop a straight, they are the best straight except flushes. The same is not true for bottom connectors like 67s, where you can flop the bottom end of a straight. While true of all top jacks and gappers like JQ KQ and KJ, those hands don’t make nearly as many straights as J10.
- It’s easy to get away from it: either you hit a big draw or hand, or you don’t and you get out of hand. Hands like KQ and KJ are too easy to fall into a pot with top pair and lose a lot of chips. Basically, you are either winning big pots or losing small ones, which is always a good thing!
- When you hit, there is usually action. With 67, you can flop a big 458, but against two-high opponents, you won’t get called. However, on the AKQ flop with J10, there is a good chance that your opponent has also hit.
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. You want a cheap multiplayer pot, just like with other speculative hands. The more players in the pot the better, for two reasons, firstly you get better value to call in the first place, but more importantly there are more people paying you too.
You don’t just need to hit a hand to win a good pot; you also need someone else to hit a slightly weaker, but still playable one. And there’s just a better chance of that happening with more people in the boat. 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!