Card Player Pro

Game: 25¢-50¢ no-limit hold’em
Stacks: Mine: $51.85; His: $92
Opponent: Unknown
M*y Position:* Small blind
My Cards: 8 8

Perhaps one of the most discussed situations in poker is when we are dealt a medium pocket pair in either the small or big blind, and we face a raise from a late-position player. None of our options seems good; we don’t feel strong enough to reraise, but we feel too strong to fold, and calling always seems to get us into a mess.

Let’s take a look at each option in isolation. Folding seems too weak for a pair such as 8-8, given that it has quite good equity against our opponent’s raising range. Furthermore, we can expect to win big if we flop a set. So, we can pretty safely eliminate the option of a fold.

Reraising has some merit, in that we might get our opponent to fold preflop, but if we reraise from the blinds often, we might actually be making a mistake by folding to him if he four-bets us. This is because he may respond to our aggression by widening his value range to include hands against which we have positive expected value (+EV), such as A-Q or A-J. It can’t be a comfortable situation to stack off 100 big blinds every time with 8-8, so we can perhaps say that we would reraise this hand on occasion, but it wouldn’t really be our first choice.

What about calling? Perhaps the most important advantage to this choice is that we can keep the pot small with our medium-strength hand. We also get to play post-flop, which is where we expect our opponents to make mistakes. It’s this post-flop play that might sometimes get you in a bind, but the more you understand the situation, the better you’ll be able to deal with it.

Playing post-flop with medium pairs isn’t too tough; there are just a few key things that you need to understand. First of all, realize that when you have a hand like 7-7 or 8-8, your equity against a standard range is unspectacular. It’s certainly good, but you are rarely going to be a big favorite in the hand unless your opponent has a lower pair or two lower unpaired cards. In all other situations, you are generally going to be flipping coins, at best.

Secondly, realize that this shaky equity means that on a lot of boards, you just aren’t going to have the best hand anymore, and that’s that. Let’s look at the example: I’m dealt the 8 8 in the small blind, and call a raise from the player in the cutoff. The flop comes down Q 10 5, and my opponent bets $1.50 after I check. On this board, there’s nothing to do but fold my hand.

Some might say, “What about when he has nothing, and you’re folding the best hand?” The key to resolving this fear is to understand that when he has nothing, that “nothing” actually still has great equity against us! If he has a hand like A-J, he has two overcards and a gutshot. A flush draw has almost 40 percent equity against us, and more if he has an overcard to go with it. Two random cards higher than ours — say, A-9 offsuit — still have about a 1-in-3 chance of beating us by the river.

So, the best-case scenario for us is one in which we are marginally ahead, and all other scenarios have us behind or crushed. Add to this the difficulty that we will have in determining where we stand when out of position against a decent opponent, and it’s clear that this isn’t a good spot for us. When we play these medium pairs, we’re looking for good boards for our hands — 7 2 2, 6 5 2, 10 3 2 — or to flop a set. The money that we make from these good situations more than makes up for the times that we have to fold what might seem like the “best hand.”