Seven Card Stud: Playing Small Pairs With A Big Kicker

Big pairs are your bread-and-butter hands in stud high. They are best played heads-up, thus you are most often going to complete or reraise the action on third street, and just keep on betting until your opponent possibly gives you a reason to slow down. And unless circumstances look dire, we go to showdown with this most profitable hand type. Most players know this and many of these hands end up playing themselves.

You can, however, differentiate yourself from your opponents by playing the marginal hands well, and in this article we will look at playing small pairs with a big kicker.

Playing Guidelines – Third Street In An Unopened Pot

Unless you are in a steal position, you should tend to only play these hands when your cards are completely live. If you run into a better hand you need all of your outs to fall back upon. While a two flush does add some value, it’s usually not enough to overcome dead pair cards.

An ace kicker has a lot of value, and a hand like (A 4) 4 should often be completed, even from early position. Even if you run into a pair of kings it’s not that big of a deal since you have an over-card kicker and are thus drawing to a higher two pair. In fact, if your hand is completely live and one of the kings is dead it’s almost a 50/50 proposition.

Your hand may even still be playable when getting reraised twice. For example, if you get two-bet (a raise of a complete is a two-bet) by a queen and three-bet by a king, not only can you call, you should probably cap the betting. Given this action, even a loose player will be tempted to fold a pair of queens. He’s not only up against a likely pair of kings, your action looks really strong and could easily be aces in the hole or even rolled-up fours.

When getting the player to fold a pair of queens, your equity goes up from around 30% to 45%. If successful, you then get to take the hand heads-up with the positional advantage. Not only is this maneuvering mathematically sound, it can also help gain you a profitable borderline maniacal image. And on your good days the player with the king up does not have what he’s trying to represent.

When opening it’s not a requirement that your kicker be an ace or higher than any other up-card, but it must be reasonably strong. For example, you can complete (Q 4) 4 with a few players left behind you, including a king. If you are reraised your typical response would be to fold, unless perhaps you are up against a really aggressive opponent.

Playable Situations – Previously Opened Pots

If another player has entered the pot before you from a non-steal position it is very important that your kicker is an over-card to the pair that you could be facing. For example, if you have (4 K) 4 you can play against a queen door card. You may not be up against a pair of queens, and if you are, the high-ante structure compensates your uphill climb.

If instead your opponent is in a stealing position and might be opening a very wide range your kicker can become relatively inconsequential. This would be the case if you are to the direct right of the bring-in and an aggressive player opens with a queen showing.

In a spot where villain might be opening any two cards underneath we should reraise a hand like (4 9)4 as long as our cards are live. It might be okay to do so if a nine is dead, but certainly we want all of the fours to be available.

It’s not enough to try and play sheriff by simply calling in this spot. That just gives your opponent a better price on his steal and possibly allows him to win with a piglet holding such as (5 9)Q; a hand that would have folded to an extra bet on third street.

Don’t keep the door open to your opponent playing a hand like that and dragging the pot with something like a pair of fives. If that happens you didn’t get unlucky, you just misplayed the hand.

Frequent reraising also has the effect of possibly tightening up your opponents’ opening range in the future, affording you more stealing opportunities. Successful stud play means the game will more often flow through you, and the task will be put to your opposition to slow you down, not vice versa.

Chasing The Higher Pair

Unfortunately, sometimes we will bump up against a higher pair, but when we have an over-card kicker to his most probable hand we are forced to chase. Assuming your opponent does not pair his door or make a running pair, you have the pot odds to continue all the way especially since implied odds are usually in our favor.

Let’s assume that we are holding the (A 4)4 and have run into a probable pair of queens. We will act last throughout the hand unless we improve in some fashion with trips, aces up, or by picking up another over-card kicker.

We can usually get in a check-raise with aces up, but should lead with trip fours and can expect to get called as our opponent will assume he’s often up against two pair that he can outdraw. We should of course fold if he catches a queen, and that’s one of the reasons why we probably hold an implied-odds advantage over opponent. We can fold when he often has trip queens (or two higher pair), but our opponent will often continue on when we are very strong.

Seventh street play is usually straight-forward; raise aces up or better, call with lesser two pair, and generally fold unimproved. However, we are getting enormous pot odds on the river to call, and should do so if there’s any possibility that our opponent was on a draw.

Small pairs can be a tricky hand type to play effectively in stud but we should still look to get involved when the time is right. We don’t want to miss profitable playing situations on third street as you only get so many of those in a session. We should also look to get aggressive with them in the appropriate spots, allowing us to gain better control over our opposition. ♠

Kevin Haney is a former actuary but left the corporate job to focus on his passions for poker and fitness. The certified personal trainer owned a gym in New Jersey, but has since moved to Las Vegas. He started playing the game back in 2003, and particularly enjoys taking new players interested in mixed games under his wing and quickly making them proficient in all variants. Learn more or just say hello with an email to [email protected].