The Trouble With Two Pair

One of the most difficult hands to play in pot-limit Omaha is a flopped two pair with no extras. With moderate action, your hand might currently be the best, but when the pots grow big, you are usually in trouble. In that case, you are usually facing:

• A better made hand, like a set
• The same two pair that you have, but with freeroll redraw potential
• A premium draw
• A combination of a made hand and a draw - for instance, an overpair plus the nut-flush draw, or a pair plus a wrap.

All in all, this is one of the classic situations; with two pair and no extras, you may be about even money or even a slight favorite if your hand is currently the best, but if it's not, you could be a tremendous dog. Top players know this, and usually try to avoid playing a big pot on the flop with this type of holding.

But in a recent game online, I was up against someone who didn't do this - and who overplayed his two-pair hands on a structural basis. We were playing heads up in a €1-€2 game. After just four or five hands of play, we got our deep stacks of 100 big blinds into the middle on a flop of A 7 6. I had the rather marginal A K 9 8, and had open-raised preflop. On the flop, I had bet two-thirds of the pot, only to get check-raised full pot. I had top pair with top kicker, an open-end straight draw, and a key card in the K. (This meant that my opponent couldn't have the nut-flush draw.) I figured the most likely hands for my opponent were a pair plus a weak flush draw or two pair with not a lot of extras, and against both of these holdings, I had (a) enough pot equity to play for stacks, and (b) possible fold equity if I chose to come over the top. So, I reraised pot, only to see my opponent instantly reraise all in with just A-Q-6-4: top pair and bottom pair with no extras.

Despite being a decent favorite, I lost the pot, as blanks came on the turn and river. But perhaps more importantly, I had gained valuable information that this opponent grossly overvalued two pair. While it is true that in heads-up play you need to open up your game somewhat, a hand like top pair and bottom pair is still not a bone-crusher, by any means, especially on a draw-heavy board and against significant action from a relatively tight player.

Seeing my opponent with a €400 stack as opposed to my €200, I feared he would hit and run on me - but he didn't. As it turned out, he probably should have. In the remainder of the session, he again would overplay two pair with no extras in two crucial pots. First, in a situation in which we were 220 big blinds deep (a third player had entered the game and I had doubled through him), he chose to make the fifth raise on the flop with just top two pair, when practically dead against my top set. And not much later, when he had built up his stack to €550 (at the expense of the third player), he again would commit fully on the flop with just two pair. This time, on a flop of 7 6 2, he made a pot-sized donk bet, coming out betting into the preflop raiser. With the 10 9 8 2, I had a pair, a wrap, and two backdoor-flush draws - a decent favorite over almost all of his most likely holdings. He bet €11.64, I raised small to €29, he reraised pot to €98.64, I reraised pot €307.56, and without any hesitation, he again went all in. (His hand was the K 7 6 5, top two pair plus a backdoor-flush draw in hearts.) I won the hand by catching an 8 on the turn for the nut straight, and then another 8 on the river for eights full.

This player had played three key pots with me, three huge confrontations in which the (deep!) money had gone in on the flop - and in all cases, his hand was two pair with almost no extras. Also in all cases, he was a significant dog! Yet, when he sat out for a while before leaving the table, his comments in the chat box made it clear that he had considered himself to be
merely unlucky.

Thus, he might just continue to play his two-pair hands the same way. And if he does - I hope he will be joining my table on many more occasions.

Rolf has been a professional cash-game player since 1998. He is the author of the successful Secrets of Professional Pot-Limit Omaha, and the co-author of Hold'em on the Come. He is the creator and presenter of the hold'em four-DVD set Rolf Slotboom's Winning Plays. He is the first-ever Dutch Champion, and maintains his own site at www.rolfslotboom.com.