Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Pocket pairs

You don't have to be a poker guru to know that a pair beats no pair. So when you look down and see your small pocket pair pre-flop your infront right? Wrong! Lets say you look down at a pair of threes, heads up against 9 10 suited, the 9 10 is a 54% favorite. Even when the 9 10 is offsuit the threes are still an underdog. Lets look at another example say 77 Vs AJ suited, The pair of 7's is then only a 52% favorite. When you think about overcards to your pair of 7's, an over card on the flop will come 92% of the time, and after all cards are down there will be an overcard a whopping 98.8% of the time. All I can say is good luck dodging them big cards!
Now don't get me wrong I'm not telling you to muck these cards as soon as you look down, you just have to play with a large degree of caution. The play that makes most sense to me would be to limp pre-flop, giving you a chance to catch a set, as well as not throwing away chips. I mean first of all just because there are overcards on the board, doesn't necessarily mean that your opponent has hit the board. After all that time your Pair turns into a set and your opponent has top two pair, your in the mix.