Let's start by defining what I mean by 'small pocket pair'. I think it's fair to say that anything from 7 7 down falls into this category. After all, with 13 card ranks, there are more pairs higher than pocket sevens than there are lower. I'm equally sure that Q Q and better are big pairs. That leaves 88, 9 9, T T and J J. There was a time when I considered eights to be a reasonably big pair but I'm increasingly of the opinion that they belong at the other end of the spectrum. Pocket nines are also difficult to categorise. I know that many hand ranking charts put them high on the list, but I'm not at all convinced. And anyone who's played any poker at all knows how notoriously difficult it is to play Jacks. So I'll call these four hands medium pairs. But medium pairs tend to be situational hands. By this I mean that they behave in different ways depending on the situation. Eights and nines are more likely to behave like small pairs, while tens and Jacks usually have the opposite tendency. But any one of these hands can flip-flop, changing their behaviour in the blink of an eye. Let's call this the 'quantum theory of pocket pairs'. So when I talk about small pocket pairs I definitely mean 2 2 - 7 7, I usually mean 8 8 and 9 9, sometimes T T is included, occasionally even J J.The way I see it, if you have a pair in the hole before the flop, especially in an un-raised pot, you usually have the best hand. It doesn't matter if someone else has A K suited; at that point it's still just a drawing hand. But after the flop, things can change quickly. They say it's hard to make a pair in Holdem, but in my experience, people hit overcards on the flop and beyond with monotonous regularity. This is probably more a matter of perception than reality, but the fact is, with one or two overcards on the board, it's hard to know where you stand with your pocket sixes. Then if another overcard hits the turn or river, your little pocket pair becomes increasingly difficult to play. I've watched the big poker games on TV often enough, and marvel at the ability of good players to hold their nerve in the face of multiple overcards and other players' raises and turn over their small pocket pair at showdown and take the pot. I guess what it comes down to is that I'm not a good enough player to play these kinds of hands post-flop. The important thing is that I've recognised this fact and have adjusted my game accordingly.
After all, the odds of improving to a set on the flop are around 8-1 against. So you can expect to be folding your small pocket pair eight times out of nine. But if you hit, you've got a monster hand that is very well hidden. You've got a good chance of raking in a big pile of chips. But a big collect in this situation is by no means guaranteed. You could put out a smallish bet and find all your potential callers folding. Or worse, you could check or min-bet and find your opponent has drawn to a bigger hand. In fact, it's a bit of a balancing act; on the one hand you want your opponent to hit a big enough hand to call your bets, on the other hand you don't want them too hit a hand that has you beat. Then you could be the one losing all your chips.
It's for these reasons that you need your opponent to have a decent-sized stack to justify calling a pre-flop bet with small pocket pairs. If I'm playing in a ring game I follow the 'rule of twenty' as recommended by Poker School Online (www.pokerschoolonline.com/articles/NLHE-cash-pre-flop-essentials). The principal is that you need a potential pot of 20 times the current bet or better to justify a set mining call. That way, the potential winnings make up for the times you miss the flop, the times you get no callers, and the times that you get outdrawn. And this refers to 'effective stack' size; there's no point in calling someone who has 20 times the bet or more if you yourself have only 10 times the bet available in your stack. So if I'm sitting on a small pocket pair and there's a bet in front of me, the first thing I'm doing is checking out the opposition's stack size to see if it's worth a call. If it's not, then most of the time I have the discipline to just fold. Most of the time.
My set mining strategy for tournaments is a little different. While you can play according to the long-term odds of hitting your hand in ring games, you have to consider other factors in tournaments. Protecting your chip stack is one of these factors. So I'm probably going to call a pre-flop raise with my pair of fours in the early stages, when the stacks are still deep, but as the tournament progresses I'm less and less likely to get involved in chasing a set. In the middle stages of a tournament my play gets significantly tighter and I'm likely to just fold my small pockets unless I'm allowed to just limp in with them. The way I play a tourney, the value of little pairs changes depending on the stage. They start out with significant value but then that value declines into the middle stages. But towards the end of the tournament, the value of these hands starts to increase again.
There are two main ways for a small pair to win at showdown: improving on the flop, or through face value. If you're playing in a multi-way pot your hand really needs to improve to win, but in a heads-up (2-way) pot, face value becomes much more important. The classic example of this is the coin-flip; where a small pocket pair is up against two over-cards (eg, 5 5 vs A Q). In this case the pocket pair is marginally ahead, with a slightly more than 50% chance of winning. This fact comes into play in the later stages of a tournament when stacks are getting shorter and shorter. If you push all-in with small pockets, unless you're unlucky enough to get called by a bigger pair, then you're at least a 50/50 chance of doubling your stack. Of course this is entirely dependant on having a big enough stack to scare off the majority of callers. The value of this kind of move is in limiting the number of players that can draw out on you. So you need to raise big (usually all-in) to get to that head-to-head coin flip.
While the coin-flip is a useful strategy when short-stacked in a tournament, I really don't see any value in it when playing a ring game. The only exception might be when playing a short-stack strategy, but that's not something that really appeals to me. There are players who like to call all-in bets with small pockets in cash games, but I'm not one of them. As far as I'm concerned, I'm playing the long game, waiting for that hand that improves enough on the flop to rake in someone's entire stack, with the odds seriously in my favour. Going for the 50/50 result in a ring game is ultimately pointless.
To sum up, in ring games I'm set mining with my small pairs. If I don't hit the flop, most of the time I'm folding. When it comes to tournaments, I'll play more or less the same way in the early stages, but the value of pockets is in their shoving potential in the later stages. Of course I'm not blind to the fact that small pockets can sometimes win unimproved at showdown, even in multi-way pots. Most of us remember playing in pots where everyone checks to the river and then a pocket pair of threes wins the pot. But this sort of thing is memorable because it's so unusual. For the most part I'm looking to improve my pockets in multi-way pots or take a 50/50 chance heads-up when the situation requires it. And that's the way I play my small pocket pairs.
However, having said that, I'm considering tinkering with the way I play these types of hands. At the moment I try to limp in with small pairs in the hopes of flopping a set. But the problem with this, especially in a ring game, is that it makes the kind of hand I'm holding obvious. With other kinds of pre-flop hands I'm almost invariably raising and, in general, the earlier the position, the bigger the raise. So anyone who's been paying attention is going to know that if I'm limping in, I'm almost certainly set mining. This could prove to be problematic, as the great thing about flopping a set is that your monster hand is so well hidden. I don't want to be telegraphing the kind of hand I'm holding to anyone who's interested.
So I've considered playing these hands pre-flop in a more standardised way in an effort to deceive. If I put in a big raise with 5 5 from early position the way I would with, say, K K then no-ones going to see my set coming when the flop is 2-5-9. Even if I've missed the flop, the opposition is likely to have been whittled down to the point where I'm actually a slight favourite to win at showdown. But the trouble with this brilliant plan is twofold. Firstly, sometimes I'm going to be called by a big pocket pair, and then I'm in real trouble. Secondly, if I miss the flop, I'm stuck with playing a marginal hand out of position; a recipe for disaster. So for now at least, I'm sticking with the Keep-It-Simple-Stupid principal. I've finally reached a point where I usually know what to do with small pocket pairs, and I'm happy with that. 'What's the use of pocket pairs?' is a question I no longer ask.
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