Rockets in the BB position, 6 handed, table folds

Question

Obviously, this is a dead rubber - but how statistically relevant is it? How much more likely is this to happen than say, 72o?

If this regularly happens in a session with your monster hands, how should you adjust your play (if at all)?

Answer 1

If everyone is folding to your raises more often than they should, raise more hands. This is particularly true if you have tighter players on your left and action is folded to you. You can either steal blinds pre-flop or win post-flop with a single continuation bet many times when your opponent misses.

Sometimes when you have a great hand like AA, nobody else happens to have a hand they want to play back with. Either they've got bad cards or they're out of position or their pet superstition says they shouldn't play that hand, whatever. It happens.

If they happen to only be folding when you have a really strong hand, though, you might ask yourself if you're subconsciously providing clues regarding your hand strength. Maybe you have bet sizing tells. Maybe your timing changes when you have a strong pocket pair. Maybe you start grinning uncontrollably. (Maybe the cards are marked and others at the table know what you're holding.)

So, if they're folding too much in general, raise more often. If they're always folding only to your premium hands, try to evaluate your own pre-flop play a little more.

Oh, I just noticed the "in the BB" in the title, so the pre-flop tells are less relevant to your question. Though I guess it's possible that your face lights up when you see the aces! Assuming that opponents don't know what your cards are, you're not significantly more or less likely to have 72o in the BB than AA during a walk than at random. You may be slightly more likely to have aces here than at random, since lots of players will enter the pot if they hold any ace and their absence from the pot implies that the deck remains enriched in aces, but this is not a significant effect.

In general, you'll get 72o more often than AA, because there are 12 ways to get 72o while there are only 6 ways to get AA.