Small Pocket pairs

How to play small pocket pairs.

You don`t call a preflop raise with a small pocket pair (PP) because you think you have the best hand preflop. You are looking to hit a set on the flop If you don`t hit, you should usually give up. You have a 12% chance (1 in 8) to hit your set This means that for every time you hit you miss seven times. Whether you can play a PP profitably depends on two factors: how much you have to pay to see the flop and how much you can expect to win when you hit.

If you would always stack you opponent when you hit your set you could call up to 12% of his stack preflop to see the flop and break even in the long run (as long as you have him covered). To win money you should pay less than 12%.

Its not very realistic to assume that you will always stack your opponent when you hit your set Let`s say an aggressive player raises 20% of his hands from the button and you call with a small PP. You hit your set but its unlikely your opponent will have a hand strong enough to stack-off. Most of the time all you`ll win is a continuation bet In this situation you cannot invest 12% to hit your set

So what is a more realistic percentage that can be invested preflop? Lets make some assumptions: you`ll win his stack 15% of the time, half his stack 20% of the time, one fifth of this stack 35% of the time and nothing 30% of the time. In this case you`ll win 32% of his stack on average, which means that you can invest 4.5% preflop (32/7=4.5) to break even! To make money you`ll have to invest even less!

So far we didn't take into account the times that you miss your set but still win the pot, and the occasions that you hit but lose your stack when your opponent has a better hand. It would be very complicated to estimate the effect this has on you expected winnings so I will assume that these factors roughly cancel out in the long run.

I think its realistic to say that you can invest between 3% and 10% of your opponents stack preflop. Take the following factors into account when estimating the exact percentage that you think you can invest:

Preflop raise %

You can expect to win less money from a player who raises a lot of hands preflop as he won`t have a strong hand very often when you hit

His position

An early position raiser will have a stonger range of hands than a late position raiser, so you can call a bigger % of his stack

Your postion

If you will be out of position postflop you will earn less when you hit and also earn less when you both miss the flop

Your actual hand

Obviously a higher PP wins more money so you can call a bigger % with 88 than with 22.

The level of your opponent

You will make more money when you play against a bad opponent because they will often stack-off with mediocre hands

To summarize, you can profitably call somewhere between 3% and 10% of your opponents stack preflop. If you are almost positive that your opponent has AA or KK you can call about 10%. If you are up against a LAG button raiser you can`t call much more than 3%. Base you`re decision on the factors I mentioned above!
Good luck!