help me with sumthing plz...

[JKshark]

how do u play small pocket pairs...it would help my game greatly if i had a few tips on this

[scrawnybob]

hi

how to play pocket pairs ?

I would say - cheaply

especially small 22-66 and medium 77-99
and even 10-10 & J-J (although I would raise these modestly preflop)

the strength of small pocket pairs comes on the flop - if and when you hit a set

given that this doesnt happen all that often you dont want to be paying over the odds preflop to stay with the hand to see if it improves on the flop

if your getting raised / re-raised preflop then you can be fairly sure your either -

a) heavily dominated by a better pocket pair 77 - QQ

b) totally dominated KK - AA

c) facing a strong drawing hand - AK, AQ, AJ, A10 or maybe A suited or K suited

if the flop comes down with anything above a 10 then chances are your chasing and badly behind - either to an improved draw or a stronger paired hand

even if the flop comes down without aces, kings, queens, jacks then even anything other than the card making your set if there are several players seeing the flop then one of them will almost certainly have paired the board with a higher card

chasing a low pocket pair past the flop is going to get expensive as you chase with next to no chance of catching up

also there are the obvious problems with flush draws and high end straight draws

so I would say

preflop -

test the water if your in late position and there are too many limpers - raise modestly to see where your at (and consider folding to any re-raise unless you feel its a positional play) and at least thin the field

if your in early position dont try anything flash - hope that no-one goes crazy in middle position and assess any late position raises for actual strength or a positional raise (which may be worth a call)

on the flop -

if you hit your set then make them pay and finish the hand as quickly as possible - especially if ther are several players / flush draws / straight draw

if you dont hit your set then be prepared to limp and hope to see more cards for very cheap / fold to raises

generally though I would say low pocket pairs are hands you have to be far more prepared to fold than to play - they look pretty but they can be very expensive

hope thats a help

cheers scrawnybob

[Dazzler69]

The thing I was always told when I was learning bout pocket pairs, the lower the pocket pair the more postion dependent they are. I will hardly ever play low pocket pairs from early position (unless the table is full of rocks) and the further around I am the more likely I am to play lower pocket pairs.