Poker Strategy

Nice Pair Luv!
There are as many ways to play hands of poker as there are hands of poker. Nobody can tell you that what you are doing is wrong or bad. Indeed there is often a good living to be made by expert players who deliberately make a terrible play because other players would never believe they would do it!

However there are a few hands that I see regularly misplayed and I‘ll try to explain why I think that here.

"55" Ok, I mean any pair lower then 9's. New students of the game will realise that by the odds they are roughly even with AK. Certainly pairs are good hands heads up but you shouldn't go wild with them! The problem with them is the downside. Many people want to get heads up with one opponent and take a coinflip (or simply take the blinds) but if that opponent wakes up with 66 or JJ your fives are now only 20% likely to win. Conversely AK only truly fears AA and KK.

In tournaments, during the early to mid stages I will limp in with these cards, hoping for as many fellow limpers as possible. If I hit a set I will come out betting strongly and if I don't I will simply dump the hand unless it has made something freakish, like 4 to a straight. You are likely to hit trips a little more often then 1 time in 8 on the flop. This means that you waste 7 "calls" (the times you don't get three of a kind,) the one time you do hit, you will get paid off as no one can honestly see it coming.

Since you should make considerably more then the 7 calls you wasted with other pairs, this is a long term winning approach to small pairs. Conversely if you push all-in with them you will win the blinds or be called and have at best a 50-50 shot to double your money. If you are called you may well be facing a bigger pair in which case you are only 20% likely to win the hand. That's not good! So, ignore the people who tell you that you're ahead of AK and go for the big win by seeing flops cheaply and nailing your opponents who have paired the top card on the flop or better still, have hit two pair!