Small Pairs at Full Ring NL

by Nick Eisel

The topic I want to focus on this month is something I've hinted at in some of my other columns and possibly covered inadvertently in a Hand Analysis example. The subject matter of the month is how to handle small to medium pocket pairs in low stakes full ring No Limit games online.

The first thing, which is probably pretty obvious to anyone who plays a good amount of hands, is that small pairs that flop a set are some of the most profitable hands in No Limit. It makes sense then that you should try to play as many of these hands as possible when you're getting a good price. I think one of the big mistakes a lot of casual or non-expert players make is to play any pair in any position no matter what. Clearly this is crossing the line of "play as many as possible," but why exactly?

The number one reason is that they aren't getting the correct implied odds. Simple poker odds tell us that you are roughly 8 to 1 to flop a set. Taking into account that you can also lose (usually a huge pot) after flopping a small set, I like to have at least 11 to 1 or better on my money before calling a raise with a hand like 33. If you always have at least 10 to 1 implied odds on your money in a low stakes game, you wouldn't be wrong by playing just about any pair.

All of that is pretty basic to any player who plays a good amount of Hold'em, so I want to delve into some more advanced concepts for online players who are multitabling and want a good overall game plan for their small pairs.

One of the big discussions in online forums a couple years back was whether you should be open limping or open raising your small pairs from early and early-middle position. I do want to say that you should be raising basically every hand from 5th position and later if you are first in the pot. Personally I'm split on this discussion as I will definitely open limp some small pairs if the game conditions aren't too aggressive. I will also raise more small pairs, even from under the gun, if the table is full of tight regulars and the play could pay off either now (because they won't put me on a small pair) or in the future, if I end up showing down and they give my preflop raises less credit. While I think the best plan is to mix these two strategies together, you're probably better off if you start by open limping and calling raises. You can't entirely play fit or fold if you're playing the 200NL level or higher though, as you'll be bleeding money against the smarter opponents who won't always pay off your set with an overpair.

I realize this may be getting pretty deep so let me try to simplify it for you. If you limp all of your pairs and an observant opponent starts to isolate you and then continuation bet most flops, you'll be in trouble unless you make some adjustments. If you only continue after hitting your set (or a rare open ender or something with 66 on a 345) you'll be an easy target for isolation. What you have to do then is take good notes and realize relatively quickly who is isolating you a lot or just raising limpers a lot from late position. Once you've found someone who is trying to run over your limps, you have a few weapons at your disposal to throw them off balance and keep them guessing.

The first thing you can do after limp-calling their raise is to start check-raise bluffing a good amount of flops. Remember that you need to be sure they are isolating light as we're not trying to blow the average player off of an overpair. Take a common situation at 200NL.

You limp 44 in 2nd position and an aggressive player two off of the button isolates to $10 with everyone folding back to you. You call and the flop comes down 752 rainbow. If you've check-folded after limping and calling his raise before, this is an excellent spot to make a small checkraise bluff. Say for instance you check and he bets $14, you should have a lot of success raising to $37-$42. The majority of the time you will take the pot down right there but if you are called it's very important to proceed with caution and likely give up on the hand if you don't have a great read that the opponent can laydown an overpair.

You can get a bit friskier with this play once you get comfortable, but it's important to consider who your opponent is and what he likely thinks of you. I tend to use this sparingly and only as a bluff against players who haven't seen me make the play before. You should also generally balance your range by playing sets the exact same way so that your opponent will have no clue if you have a set or a bluff in a vacuum. An interesting dynamic also comes up when you do actually have a set and check-raise the flop here and get called. Most players would automatically bet out on the turn in a situation like this but it doesn't really make a lot of sense in terms of the overall plan. If you'd usually check-fold with a bluff, why would you ever bet out the turn when it's likely your opponent has some kind of hand and will either bet or call a river bet? If you have history, or your opponent is looser and possibly thinks you are weak, you should plan on checking the turn and either checkraising all in or betting out the river if the turn checks through. Consider too that your opponent likely only has two outs and your line is very odd which will make him even more likely to pay you off.

As a general rule I'd mainly do this on low boards, but you can start mixing it up more against players who are really attacking your limps with a wide range and start adding in more types of boards for checkraises.

A second solution that works better against tighter players is to limp-reraise with the smaller pairs representing a trap with AA, KK, or maybe AKs. In the pocket fours situation above you could reraise to about $31 and take the point down without even seeing a flop. This may seem crazy initially but game theory would agree that you should add some bluffs into spots where you would otherwise only have the nuts or close to it. If you start doing this you should also sometimes limp-reraise with AA just so that your range will make more sense. A final comment here is that I'd rather do this with the lower pairs and stick to limp-calling with 66-99 for the most part because they have a bit more showdown value.

A third and more common answer to this problem (which I probably should've listed first but whatever) is to limp-call and then check-call some safer looking flops. This is the general answer that people use to someone isolating a lot, but I'm not a huge fan of it because a good player will just fire the second barrel a lot and put you in a very tough situation if you check-call 77 on a J63 board, or similar. Not only are there a ton of scary turns like an A or K, but you'll almost have to give your opponent credit if he fires on a brick as well since he has position and raised preflop. This option is best if your opponent is aggressive but tends to be straightforward postflop and will give up a lot of pots without a big fight. Overall, I like this least of the three choices because it is pretty obvious what you have in a spot like this and all it takes is a little bit of guts to fold you out. They also have an easy time getting value since your range is so weighted towards pocket pairs.

Good luck at the tables.