A-Q may look almost as playable, even as raise-worthy, as A-K, yet being that single pip lower makes it a much weaker starting hand.

This is especially true in no-limit hold 'em, in which each pot you enter provides a golden opportunity to lose all your chips. If your kicker determines who wins the vast majority of pots when an ace hits the board, it's good to remember that close counts in hand grenades, horseshoes and love, but not poker.

A-Q often turns out to be what is called a trouble or trap hand. This means that the bigger a pot gets, the more likely you are to be drawing almost dead, but the harder it will be to fold, particularly when an ace or two appears on the board, or a king and a queen. The hand is even dangerous when the board is queen high, because if your opponent holds queens, kings or aces, your goose will be thoroughly cooked.

It's for reasons like these that T.J. Cloutier and others recommend folding A-Q in the first five positions, and playing it cautiously as you move closer to the button.

"If somebody raises, what do you do with this hand?" Cloutier asks rhetorically in his blue book, "Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold 'em." The answer is obvious: Fold. "When you move in on them," he says elsewhere, "there are a lot of players who will call a raise for all their chips with a hand like A-Q. They're not good players, but they are out there."

In his useful if absurdly braggadocio primer "Play Poker Like the Pros," Phil Hellmuth puts A-Q in the same category with small pairs, while rating A-K closer in value to nines, 10s and jacks. He advises even tight beginners to take a flop with A-Q, but as cheaply as possible.

In "Super System 2," Doyle Brunson says that A-K is his favorite starting hand, A-Q his least favorite. This is why Brunson is probably the only player in the world with two hands named for him: 10-2 because he won two World Series of Poker championships while holding it, and A-Q because, as he writes, "I try never to play this hand."

I wish I had taken his tacit advice when I was lucky enough to make the final table of the 2000 World Series. On hand nine, in the big blind, I found the A-Q of clubs and got ready to raise. Three players ahead of me folded, but Hasan Habib, in the small blind, raised all-in right in front of me. Now at a full table, suited A-Q is a much better hand to raise than to call with, but five-handed it can fairly be called a monster. I had about $525,000 to Hasan's $415,000. I'd also put Hasan on a steal.

It was that passage from Cloutier -- whose right elbow happened to be brushing my left one -- that stuck in my craw: There are a lot of players who will call a raise for all of their chips with a hand like A-Q. They're not good players, but they are out there. Yet I didn't think Hasan had a better hand.

When I finally said, "Call," Hasan turned over an ace and a four, both of hearts. Delirious with joy, I flipped up my suited A-Q. Only the three remaining fours or a flurry of hearts could beat me, though I still had to endure the flop of Hasan's and my life: a nine, then a six, then a king, all of spades. So far, so fantastic. Dead to a four, Hasan groaned, shook his head. Unless the next two cards were both spades, every other card in the deck would give me the $970,000 pot.

The crowd was bellowing dozens of things, but all I could hear were Hasan's fans pleading for fours. Even so, I was confident I was going to win not just this pot, but the tournament. One and a half million bucks. The gold bracelet. I'd be poker's new heavyweight champion.

My faith seemed confirmed by the five of diamonds on the turn. Close to a four, I silently gloated, but no suck-out cigar. I gleefully calculated the odds of a pot-splitting flush: Zilch! Nada! Zero!

From the way Hasan was holding his right arm, I could tell he was getting ready to shake my hand. I actually felt sorry for the guy. I had won my $10,000 seat eight days earlier when he and I were heads-up in a one-table satellite, and this would be the second time I'd beaten him out of serious money. So when the river card flashed as the -- what!? -- four of clubs, I reeled in stunned silence, even though a chorus of curses and fours was bouncing around in my skull.

Three hands later I found an A-2 and moved in for $96,000. Steve Kaufman called and showed me A-Q, and this time Brunson held up. A few months after that, Hasan kindly gave me a tour of the house he had bought in Los Angeles, in part with the proceeds of finishing fourth instead of fifth, where I'd finished. I am welcome in that house, or at his place in Las Vegas, anytime I happen to be in the neighborhood.

Think that was brutal? At the same 2000 final table, after everyone else had been eliminated, Cloutier fought his way back from a 13-to-1 chip deficit to pull almost even with Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. Holding A-Q, T.J. enticed Chris to go all-in with A-9, and a fatal nine fell on the river. At that table at least, T.J. and I both should have listened to Doyle.