Playing Small Pocket Pairs

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There’s always a twinge of excitement every time you look down to see a pocket pair. Pocket pairs can turn into sets, and sets can turn into big paydays. While small pocket pairs can be some of the most straightforward hands in no-limit, they do present a pitfall or two for the unwary player. I’ll discuss their strengths and weaknesses.

Great Multiway

Small pocket pairs are truly excellent hands in multiway pots. If you play a lot of live no-limit, you’ve no doubt played in games where most pots see four, six, eight players to a flop. Small pocket pairs are dream hands in these games because they flop sets that you can count on to be best the vast majority of the time. The more opponents you have, the bigger the chance you’ll find an unsuspecting sap with top pair happy to pay you off. Simple enough. But I do have two comments about pairs in multiway pots.

First, be cautious in truly wild games. They aren’t common, but I’ve played in a few games where routinely three or more players would see nearly every flop for 15-20 big blinds each ($75 to $100 in a $2-$5 game). If it costs you $100 to see a flop, even in a crazy game where you’re very likely to get paid off if you hit, the odds might not be there for you to flop a set. Remember that you will flop a set only 1 time in 8.5, and neither winning nor getting paid off is guaranteed. Also, you could get caught calling a big raise only for an opponent to shove all-in behind you. So check the stack sizes and make sure you have enough potential upside to make up for the times things don’t go according to plan.

Second, if several players limp in front of you, it’s not always best to limp along. Sometimes putting in a raise is better, even if you’re sure nearly everyone will call. It depends on your stack sizes and the stack sizes of the majority of your opponents. The deeper everyone is, the more advantage raising has.

If raising a small pair seems strange to you, think about it this way. There’s no doubt that playing a small pair in a sixhanded pot for $5 is profitable when most players have around $500. Playing a small pair in a sixhanded pot for $10 is roughly twice as profitable when the same players have around $1,000. It’s not exactly proportional, of course, but the basic idea holds. When you have a profitable situation, the larger you can pump up the stakes without making the stack-to-pot ratio much lower, the more profitable the situation will be. Therefore, it’s often worth it to put in a modest raise in a multiway pot with a small pocket pair.

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