POTD #303 AJ Week Begins with a hand vs Stephen Chidiwick

I make a mistake in a three bet pot.

Pocket jacks, AQ, and to a lesser extent AK are the canonical “trouble hands” in poker. When I first started playing poker, AK had the nickname Anna Kournikova because it “looked pretty and never won.” Pocket jacks is a hand that you rarely want to fold, but it also often gets all-in vs. a higher pair, so it regularly loses big pots, which makes it everyone’s least favourite hand. Familiarity breeds contempt; no one’s least favourite hand is 93o, because you should not have much of a relationship with the Doug Gilmour outside of folding it.

Pocket jacks has earned its reputation, but at POTD, I think it’s too good a hand to warrant such negative feelings. If your opponents had no memory and were incapable of adjusting and you got dealt pocket jacks every hand, you’d be the biggest winner in your game. The same is true of AK and AQs. AQo is close, but we want a challenge at POTD. So this week, I’m going to write about three hands I played with a hand that you would not accept getting dealt every hand: the humble AJ. To make things even trickier, two of the three hands I played this week will be against Stephen Chidwick. The third hand will be against a forgotten opponent, and it occurred in a tournament Stephen Chidwick played, so it’s possible he was my opponent. Either way, let’s kick off AJ week with a three-bet pot I played where I wish I had a trouble hand like pocket jacks, but instead I flopped second pair with a hand that’s even more troubling, AJ.

Triton Poker Series London 2023 - Event #6 $60k NLH 7-Handed
(500/1k/1k) (SB/BB/BBA). 3 Handed.

Stephen Chidwick makes it 3k on the button, I make it 16k in the SB with A♥️J♥️, he calls.

Flop (34k) K♦️J♦️9♥️: I bet 18k, Stevie folds.