Folding pairs before the flop
It hurts to fold a pair before the flop. Even ducks. I hate the feeling that comes between the folding of a pair and the flop coming out on the table. I get this pinchy gut bubble that sometimes makes me stand up and go in the other room. There’s nothing worse than being forced to fold a small pair and end up seeing it hit a set. But often it is the right play.
If you have 99 and someone raises 3-4x the blind before you and you call and it comes around to someone else who comes over the top huge, you are almost always at best a 50/50. Unless that player is capable of making that raise with any small pair, which some players are, but you will probably know who those players are.
I watched Daniel Alaei fold pocket 9’s to a large reraise correctly on High Stakes poker the other day. It wasn’t even a huge raise. He just knew the other guy had a big pair and wasn’t willing to gamble 6-1 to hit a set. A lot of players can’t make that fold. And a lot get lucky and hit their out. But more often they lose.
In the cash game I played at several years ago somebody was at the table complaining they never flopped sets and never won with small pairs. There were a lot of thug type guys at this game. One of the guys at the table kept limping and then coming over the top big when he was raised. Several times he won a chunk of money without ever seeing a flop. Several times he tossed his pocket 44 or 66 over and said, “That’s how you win with small pairs.”
That’s pretty true. If you’re the one pushing the action, making a large reraise in a small raised pot is going to take it down.
I guess that’s the big thing with small pairs: a lot of people like to just call and try to flop a set. That’s a fair way to do it, but it can be months with no set (Believe me, I haven’t seen one in I can’t even remember how long). If given the chance to be aggressive, maybe push it. In the face of large aggression, it might be better to wait it out.
Related Stories
POSTED IN: daniel alaei, high stakes poker, small pairs
0 opinions for Folding pairs before the flop
No one has left a comment yet. You know what this means, right? You could be first!
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: