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#871 – How Do You Play Small Pairs Late in a Tournament?
The final video question presented to me by the guys at ThePotKings.com concerned a hand at the final table when I was dealt pocket deuces. I thought I’d reprint my answer here, in hopes it will spur some creative thinking about the issue of how to play small pairs.
I play small pairs much different at the end of a tournament than at the beginning. Early in a tournament, my goal with a small pocket pair is to flop a set (which I’ll do about one time in eight) and win a big pot against an opponent’s superior starting hand. In those deep-stack situations, I have to raise or call a raise. I want to be against a good hand, not a bunch of limpers. And I don’t want to give away information, which I’d do if I had a class of raising hands and a class of calling hands. I definitely do not want to reraise with a small or medium pair. The guy with aces or kings would love that and the guy with A-K might not mind the coin flip. But imagine what you can make with 3,000 starting chips and blinds of 10-20 with pocket fives against A-A or K-K and a flop of T-5-2. Or against A-K with a flop of K-9-5. The idea is to call, hit a set, and get paid.
(Related advice: when you are the player with aces or kings, don’t get too coy with a deep stack. The only way you’ll win a huge pot with a big pocket pair is by making a set yourself or finding an opponent with a slightly smaller pocket pair. Trust me, you DON’T want to keep 5-5 or 6-5s in a hand against your pocket aces.)
Late in a tournament, it’s a different story. In the hand in Video 6, we were three-handed at the final table, with 300-600 blinds and a 75 ante. I was dealt pocket deuces in the small blind. The player on the button, who started the hand with 13 big blinds, raised to 1,800.
Calling with pocket deuces – what I would almost automatically do in the early part of a tournament – is not an option. Because I am unlikely to flop a set, the board will look bad no matter what, so my hand will likely never be stronger than it is right now. On the other hand, it’s almost impossible for me to be more than a tiny favorite (over any two random unpaired cards) and I would be a huge underdog against any other pocket pair. Sounds like an argument for folding, right?
If the button had moved all-in, folding would probably be appropriate. I would be getting the odds for a coin flip, but I would be risking more than half my chips where my best-case scenario is a coin flip and I could be a huge underdog. But my opponent, who I regarded as a solid, conservative player, did not move all-in. It was my subjective judgment that he was much more likely to be raising with two unpaired cards rather than a pocket pair. For him, it’s not worth risking a showdown with something like pocket fours when (a) the hand will only get worse after the flop, (b) thirteen big blinds shoved into the pot is enough to scare most opponents, and (c) the blinds and antes are big enough to be worth taking without a fight. I thought the player on the button would make a regular raise with unpaired cards and aces or kings, but move all-in with a vulnerable “made” hand like a pocket pair.
Once I reached that conclusion, I still had to decide whether to fold or push. What it came down to was my evaluation of the likelihood my opponent would fold to a re-raise. If you know you are going to be in a showdown and your best-case scenario is a coin flip, the marginal pot odds probably aren’t worth risking getting crippled. But if you add in a reasonable chance your re-raise would make your opponent fold, the fallback possibility of a coin flip becomes more palatable.
I really thought I could get my opponent to fold here. He was a conservative player, but I thought his raising range three-handed would include more hands than “all-in hands.” In addition, he could have moved all-in and didn’t.
So I re-raised to 5,400. Even though I didn’t re-raise all in, this was the equivalent. If he called, he would have just 2,600 left and the pot would be over 11,000. There is no way either of us will get away from this hand for 2,600 after the flop. Therefore, my bet of 5,400 was really the same as betting 8,000 and moving him all-in.
He called and the flop came 4h-8s-8d. It’s all a formality after this: I led out by betting enough to put him all-in for his last 2,600 and he called. He had Ad-Qs, but did not improve and I busted him in third place.
The question was posed as follows: “Why did you play this hand the way you did?”
In short, it was a shove-or-fold situation and I concluded that the likelihood of my opponent folding made it worth taking a coin flip in the event the called. He called, it was a coin flip, and I won. (For the record, we won’t ever know whether I was correct about the likelihood he would fold. Obviously, he wouldn’t fold a top-5% hand like A-Q. We just don’t know whether he would also raise with hands like Q-T and whether he would fold to a re-raise in that situation. But I thought he would.)
A few concluding notes: First, don’t be confused by the betting amounts. Like I said, once I made a bet for most of his stack and he called, all the chips were going in. In this instance, the pot was offering better than five-to-one odds for either of us to make the last call. Second, I hate pocket deuces late in a tournament. Except for an opponent having A-2, it can never be better than a coin flip. Therefore, I wouldn’t consider pocket deuces any better than 3-2 for a substantial amount of chips UNLESS I can raise or re-rasie and incorporate some likelihood of winning the pot uncontested into the coin flip scenario. Therefore, I consider this play appropriate only as the aggressor and only if there is a basis for believing your opponent could fold.
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