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Queen-Ten suited is one of those strong and silent types of poker hands.
It’s not a premium Rolls Royce like Pocket Aces. Instead, it’s more of a Volvo: fast, reliable, and safe. Nothing wrong with that in my book!
In this article, you will learn the following:
Let’s get into it.
Let’s run through every common preflop spot with Queen-Ten suited.
Unopened Pots
Queen-Ten suited is strong enough to open-raise from any position. Limping with this hand would cause you to lose out on some expected value because you can’t doesn’t deny equity by limping, plus it will lead to you winning smaller pots on average.
Against a Raise
Your play when facing a raise should depend on your position and the position of the raiser. Let’s split this section into three groups:
When you’re in Middle Position or Late Position
From the Small Blind
From the Big Blind
There are two schools of thought for playing versus raises in cash games, both of which can be good:
3-bet or fold strategy.
Mixed strategy including both 3-bets and cold-calls.
Both strategies have extremely similar expected value (EV) as long as you apply the appropriate postflop strategy. So, you can choose whichever one you’re more comfortable with or the one that seems to make more sense in your games.
Related article: Should You Stop Cold-Calling in Cash Games?
If you want to use the 3-bet or fold strategy, you should sometimes 3-bet with Queen-Ten suited, but not always. To be more precise:
Against an Early Position raise, fold Queen-Ten suited.
Against a Middle Position raise, fold if you are in the Cutoff.
Against a Middle Position raise, 3-bet if you are on the Button.
Against a Cutoff raise, 3-bet from the Button.
If you want to go with a mixed strategy, then you should usually just call with Queen-Ten suited. This hand is not strong enough to 3-bet for value, nor is it weak enough to 3-bet as a semi-bluff. It falls right in the middle, making it the perfect call in most situations. That said, if you are on the Button against a Cutoff raise, specifically, you can mix between 3-betting and calling.
From the Small Blind
You should 3-betwith this hand against almost all positions in a 6-max game. The one exception is when the Lojack is the player who raised, in which case you can fold. In a 9-handed game, get out of the way versus UTG, UTG+1, and UTG+2 as well.
From the Big Blind
When you’re in the Big Blind facing a raise, you should vary your play based on the position of the raiser.
If it was the Cutoff or Button who raised, you can either 3-bet or call (using a mixed frequency strategy is best according to preflop solver outputs). Against all other positions, just call and see a flop.
