Scary Pairs

by Jim Woods

Recently I had a few spare moments, so I flipped on the TV and quickly found a broadcast of the final table of a World Poker Tour event. Guy Laliberte had unsuited Big Slick and a large stack. He made a preflop raise of 500,000 chips, which was about 20% of Tim Phan's stack. Tim looked down at pocket fives and made the call.

The flop was a bunch of rags: 7 2 2 to be exact. Tim was about a 3-to-1 favorite, and he bet 400,000. Guy raised all-in very quickly, and after some thought Tim folded. Not long thereafter Tim, his stack crippled, went all-in with 99 and lost to Kirk Morrison, who had the great fortune to be dealt AA.

I don't know what occurred in the hands in which Tim and Guy had locked horns earlier in that tournament, or even in prior play. The few times that I've seen Guy on TV, he seems to play aggressively. He's not afraid to raise or go all-in on a bluff or a draw, and I assume that Tim knows that and much more about Guy. I don't question Tim's preflop call, but how much better a flop could he have asked for (short of a set or quads, of course)? Probably the better move for Tim would have been an all-in on the flop. Guy may have folded, and even if he called, the odds were clearly in Tim's favor.

That hand got me thinking about small pocket pairs. What are we hoping for when we see a flop with a small pair? A set, of course, or better. But as many of us know, the odds of flopping a set, even if both of the "money" cards are live, are only about one in eight. Moreover, a small percentage of the time when we DO flop a set, we will be behind, so the odds of flopping a set AND being ahead are probably closer to one in nine.

Presto has its followers, including me from time to time. However, the smaller your pocket pair, the higher the odds of being behind on the flop even if you were ahead preflop, as Tim was. When you play presto, any one of 36 overcards could flop and put you in catch-up mode. Suppose Guy was making a move with A7 off, for example. The 2 2 7 flop looked safe for Tim, but it would have been deadly.

Lest presto's fans think I'm picking on their favorite, I think my comments apply to all small pairs and most medium pairs, too. Remember that the 8 is the middle rank in the deck. When you play a pocket pair smaller than eights, not only could you be outflopped, but there is much more of a chance that two or more overcards could flop. Suppose the flop had been Q J 2, or T 8 3, or any number of other combinations including two overcards to Tim's fives. How could Tim call any sizeable bet or raise?

The third problem was position. It's much safer to call with a small-to-medium pair when you act last after the flop. Let's reverse the players' positions in the example above. After the 2 2 7 flop, it is almost a certainty that Guy would have put more chips in the pot. That wouldn't have been a mere continuation bet. Guy would have been fairly sure that Tim, a very good player, didn't call his preflop raise with 72, so he wouldn't have been unreasonable if he thought that his Big Slick was in the lead. However, Tim could have gone all-in and made it very difficult for Guy to call. If Guy folded after a flop bet, the win would have almost doubled Tim's stack.

As Clint Eastwood so famously said, "I know what you're thinking." You think I'm being too conservative (a nice term for "pansy"). We've all heard and read that any pocket pair is a big hand in a short-handed game. Also, in the edited TV broadcast there was no indication of how much garbage Tim had seen since his last premium hand. After a slew of 73, T2, 84, and similar trash hands, presto can look...well, magical.

However, I'm drawing on something profound I read years ago in "Championship No-Limit & Pot-Limit Holdem" by T. J. Cloutier and Tom McAvoy. Those poker giants agreed to disagree on small pocket pairs. Tom favors seeing the flop with them because he can get away from those hands easily if he doesn't flop a set. T. J. feels that in the long run they waste more of your chips than they gain for you, so he doesn't like to call preflop raises with small pairs. My approach is a hybrid position. I like to see flops with pocket pairs in the early to middle stages of a tournament. At the end, however, I'd rather wait for a premium hand or two paint cards. I can get away from KQ, KJ, or QJ after a non-helpful flop just as easily, or more easily, than a small or medium pocket pair, and if I pair some paint there's a much higher probability that I'm in the lead.

Finally, think of small pairs in relation to the hands your opponents are likely to play. How many thousands of times have you seen someone raise, call a raise, or go all-in late in a tournament with any ace or a suited king? When an opponent does that, what does he NOT want you to have? A big pair or a bigger ace or king, right? Aren't you doing exactly what he wants you to do when you call with two small cards? Sure, you're a mathematical favorite with your pocket pair, but he has at least three outs times five, and if he catches one early you only have two outs for a re-draw. Do you really want to tell your friends and neighbors you called all-in with 44 or 66 in the hand that busted you out of the tourney? A further complication is the one-suit flop we see so often. With your small to medium cards, you may make the second- or third-best flush, and how easy will that be to fold, especially when the pot is huge?

Take my advice, friends. Don't make a habit of calling raises late in tourneys with pocket pairs smaller than eights, and be on guard even with JJ through 99 (see my previous article, "The Trouble with Jacks"). Eight out of nine times you wouldn't have flopped a winner, and you'll be patting yourself on the back for a good fold.

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About the Author:
Jim Woods is a middle-aged attorney (but please don't hold that against him) that loves fishing and poker. He has an undergraduate degree... that comes in handy in poker, less so in poker. His one favorite poker fantasy? Using Cling Eastwood's famous line on Phil Hellmuth while having him dominated in a hand: "I know what you're thinking... But what you gotta as yourself is: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well... do ya, punk?