Pocket Pairs in Small Stakes Hold'em

Optimal maths poker isn't natural or intuitive for many and the math is only one aspect of poker. The requisite to fold for equity rather than chase for excitement is also unnatural psychologically.

Sometimes I miss my Limit Hold'em and as I learn other games I find that I struggle to win at it now. I used to win at $5/$10 consistently (when the games were much softer) and have played up to $20/$40 occassionally. But Adam's suspended blog got me thinking when I watched his hands play out. It reminded me how frustrating the game can be if you don't have the confidence in your own actions and focus on getting it in good.

Today, there appears not to be much wrong with Adam's play. He has recently posted about a new LAG approach though which inherently incurs more variance and attracts action so you will take more bad beats. That aside, I read a snippet last night in "Small Stakes Hold'em" by Ed Miller (I recommend it). The maths seemed so wrong that I was going to check it out. Turns out (no surprise with Sklansky and Malmuth at the helm) that it was spot on.

Using PokerStove Monte Carlo simulation(www.pokerstove.com), with 5 opponents willing to take a flop with 40% of their hands {44+,A2s+,K2s+,Q5s+,J7s+,T7s+,97s+}, which doesn't seem to be unreasonable looking at what reaches showdown with Adam.

The book states that with AA you should be jamming on a dry board with almost 50% equity, but with TT in this spot you should be calling because your equity is closer to 21%. I was amazed! I extended the simulation to see the spectrum. The inter-pair gap gets greater with higher pairs, for the record -

AA thru 22 is 42.3%, 33.2%, 27.5%, 23.6%, 20.4%, 18%, 16.5%, 15.3%, 15.7%, 14.9%, 14.2%, 13.9%.

My interpretation is something that I've experienced and posted about before. When playing against 5 loose opponents willing to get to showdown with marginal hands and draws:
- QQ thru 99 are really middle pairs; (Adam inspired this insight)
- 88 is the cut-off where you are becoming a dog.
- 77 thru 22 are set mining hands with implied odds - flop or stop.


BRAINTEASER : I've run the simulator a few times ... why does it always deliver the pre-flop equity for 77 to be 15.3% while 66 is 15.7%, at first glance an anomaly?

TRUST IN MATHS? Even if you "knew" all the other players starting range was 40% (and the maths above), would you ever prefer 66 preflop over 77?

Medium Pair Stats from Poker Office

Blindman was right when he said that he needed more info. Consistent with the attached stats, I nearly always raise with my pps and c-bet them too. This gets me committed and I can see with the replayer that I force out worse hands and encourage big pots when facing better hands.

I need to focus on Big Hand, Big Pot, Small Hand, Small Pot in these situations even more. I was also folding to Turn check/raises on blank and scary boards which may or may not have been a mistake. I might have lost more, but it is possible that I was being moved on.

The long and short of it is that I am a modest net winner with 66 thru 22 and medium pairs are more like these than the premium pairs and should be played accordingly.

Medium Pairs are killing me! -238 BB/100

Well, I took a little time out to check my PokerOffice stats and to my amazement there was a massive leak staring at me within minutes. I've looked before but never found such a leak. But the difference this time was the filtering and the volume.

By 4-tabling FR NL50 for a couple of weeks, my inner game seems to have settled down. Previously, I'd bounce about when losing at one to another Limit, NL and Omaha. That kept me fresh and reduced tilt but constantly changing my style, I think and affected my stats and what I could reliably read into them.

This time, I filtered 8 or more players NL50 and sorted my hands by BB/100 won. Not surprisingly, most profitable are the premium pairs AA thru QQ in that order, which I'm very pleased about. They say that anyone can play AA, but for the record, incredibly I used to be a losing AA player at one time. As I found out and you all know, never slow play AA!

But medium pairs are obviously vastly different. After being dealt a relatively small volume of medium pairs, 73 in total, my losing rate is a wopping 238 bb/100. The funny thing is that I lose more with JJ, then TT, 99, 88 in order.

The good news is that whjen I fix this massive leak, I should help lift myself above break even ( the purpose of this intraverted blog). With self awareness can come self improvement, so I'm halfway there. Please feel free to leave any study pointers as a Comment for me and others. I'll update later when I've worked the answer out, for now plugging this has got to be my priority.

I've just received a CardRunners subscription for Fathers Day, so maybe the answers will be in there.

As an aside, I have continued to be break even over the weekend. Found the grind a bit boring at times and took a quick stab at one NL100 table. Spewed off $50 on a bad call but recovered to be up $15 after approx 150 hands. Played well in general, I think. Folded all medium pairs preflop :-).

Another relaxation was my first Omaha HiLo tourney for $22. Came 15th out of 52 which I was content with given that I've never read about it or played before, just what I pick up on podcasts. Basically, don't leave home without A2. Bad news is that A2 doesn't appear too much (or I was card dead) and when it does, there may be no qualifying low :-(. Nitty never wins, eh?

Omaha is my favourite game (more thinking), so I'm looking forward to moving over to this style when I've improved my NLHE more. The availability of beatable of NLHE games in Oz is my focus for now. I've never played split games of any type, but have the books waiting for when I do. The beauty of poker ... the journey is only just beginning.