When you are dealt a hand in early position you are generally folding all but premium hands. But a pocket pair is certainly not a bad hand and depending on the size of the pair not something you should be folding every time. A new common move during online poker cash games and poker tournaments is to play aggressively from under the gun (one position to the right of the big blind). We must keep up with the latest poker theory to stay afloat and we must consider how to play these pocket pairs from early position in poker tournaments and cash games based on this new trend.

To research this concept I read around some of the poker forums. One poster called KurtSF said “This is, imo, somewhat of a religious debate. By that I mean everyone’s got their opinions and its likely no one is right”. Whilst another poster said there were profits to be made by playing straight forwardly at the lower stakes. What became obvious very quickly for me was either no-one really knew what to do or there is not one clear answer. It is most likely the latter with poker as always analysed in hindsight.

Texas Hold ’em poker is a game where the right answer varies from player to player. This is one such example. One of my professional poker player friends told me that when he analysed his stats and hand histories he noticed that he has leaking a lot of bets by playing pocket pairs from early position, including Aces. He decided to completely eradicate this from his game. He said that based on his hand histories, removal of all pocket pairs from UTG and UTG+1 would have saved him $15,000 across the year. He continues to snap fold all pocket pairs in early position to this day.

Normal poker strategy says that you should raise with pocket pairs over 55 or 66 but fold everything else. These pairs are also at risk, you need to be looking to hit your set and therefore the stack size of your opponents is a consideration before you make the bet. You are likely to face overcards to your pocket pair and really the best you can hope for is to be second pair to the board. You are hoping to hit a concealed set and then stack your opponent. In a poker tournament you would often go all in depending on the blinds, in a cash game Harrington on Holdem recommends having at least twenty five big blinds in an opponents stack before playing such a hand. Again, you are aiming for the set and fighting for all of your opponent’s chips.

You can either limp or raise, providing you have a strategy for the late position re-raise or raise. I would not get into a raising war with a large stack as after our flop which is never going to be the most friendly for us (even if we get a flush draw it is still a low draw). Faced with a raise post flop more often than not unless we have a great read we must fold. Reasons to limp rather than raise can include things like you are active at the table and opponents will fold to a continuation bet post flop or there is little in your opponents stack to win as we covered earlier. If the table is allowing plenty of limps pre-flop this can be excellent for lower pocket pairs as you are getting cheap looks at flops and odds are you will hit your set for less money invested making this a positive EV situation.

By Malcolm Clarke