How to Play Big Pairs (So That They Don’t Play You)

Everyone loves looking down at a pair of aces or kings, especially late in a no-limit hold’em tournament on a short or medium stack. The strategy in those cases is simple—get the chips in as soon as possible. With a deep stack, it’s still a good feeling to find aces or kings in the hole—they’re highly profitable at any chip count—but a player’s rush of excitement must soon give way to intense focus. The fate of his tournament may well be decided by his next few maneuvers.

Deep stack play with big overpairs can lead to some of the most complicated decisions in no-limit hold’em. Get it all-in blindly after the flop and you’ll surely be losing money, even with the very best starting hands in the game. But it would be equally foolish to extract value from these hands only when they improve. Most players, quite rightly, don’t give up top pair without a little bit of a fight, and it’s your job to make them pay for the privilege when you have a big pair. You just have to try not to lose your stack in the process.

If that plan sounds difficult to execute, that’s because it is—so difficult, in fact, that many players never really learn how to do it. The vast majority of tournament levels feature small or medium stacks anyway, so in the rare case that these players find themselves in a deep stack situation, they just play their big pairs cautiously and pray for a quick showdown. That strategy worked for a lot of people for a lot of years. But with the prevalence of deep stack tournaments in today’s poker scene, it’s essential that the modern player come up with something better. Below are a few guidelines to help you do just that.

First, don’t be afraid to get paid. I’ve written before (“Betting Your Hand”, 4/2/2010) about the importance of value betting one pair—even on the river, even in a big pot—if you have strong reason to believe your opponent will call with a worse hand. There’s always a chance that an opponent has slowplayed the nuts, but if he’s played passively all the way to the river, and if there are good hands he would’ve played passively that you can beat, it’s imperative to bet for value. A friend of mine, an excellent professional player, recently played a hand where he reraised preflop with aces, and followed through with bets on the flop and turn as his opponent (who had originally opened under the gun) continued to call. By the river, the board read J-7-2-2-5 and the under the gun player checked for a third time. My friend knew that his opponent would’ve played queens or kings in exactly this way, and so he made a third postflop bet. This is the kind of thinking, and the kind of follow-through, that allows players not just to go deep in tournaments, but to win. The unfortunate ending to this hand was that UTG check-raised all-in on the river, and my friend called and lost to pocket jacks. (It was a difficult decision whether to call the check-raise, but our hero was getting a big price by then, and he knew his opponent—himself an outstanding tournament professional—was capable of turning queens or ace-jack into a bluff.) Prepare yourself for bustouts like this. When you’re trying to win tournaments, you will sometimes go broke in spots that “could’ve been avoided.” If you only go broke when you “have to,” you will likely never win.

Second, don’t be afraid to fold! I just discussed a situation where an opponent played passively throughout the hand. Aggressive actions are a completely different story. When some opponents raise on the turn or river, they can beat one pair nearly every time. There’s nothing wrong with betting aces for value against these players, hoping they’ll call with a worse hand, and then folding to a raise, knowing they wouldn’t raise without a better hand. In my last tournament, an aggressive small blind reraised against an early position opener, and I four-bet from the big blind with pocket kings. The early player folded, and the small blind chose to five-bet. My read at the time was that I had an extremely aggressive image and that the small blind would’ve been willing to five-bet me without the nuts. I’m not sure whether that read was right, but I do know this—I was afraid to fold. I’ve never folded pocket kings preflop in my life (largely because I usually try to not put myself in positions where folding preflop is reasonable, as I’ve written about before in “Can I Get Away from This?” 1/3/2007), and I didn’t want to start here. But I should’ve been open to the possibility. It would’ve been reasonable to four-bet for value, hoping that worse hands would call, but to fold to the five-bet, which was in all likelihood aces. As you might have guessed, it was in fact aces, and I had to spend another bullet reentering the tournament. Don’t be afraid to fold even a very strong hand if the situation calls for it. There’s a first time for everything.

Putting those two pieces of advice together is admittedly tricky, but this is where your experience as a poker player comes in. Make reads. Put your opponents on hands. Use your judgment based on the action, the positions, the stack sizes, and the tournament situation to determine your opponent’s range, and the likelihood that they’ll call if you bet. In short, play poker. That advice may sound flip or obvious, but many players are scared to engage when the decisions are tough. They go into a defensive shell instead of trying to give themselves the best chance to win. Stop playing with fear, and start playing with confidence. The results may follow sooner than you think. ♠

Matt Matros is the author of The Making of a Poker Player, and a three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner. He is also a featured coach for cardrunners.com.