Noob Question #1 - Coldcalling Pocket Pairs preflop

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For me, out of 16k hands, 5's, 3's, and 2's are my only losers, but 4's are big winners, netting more BB/100 than even jacks, and much, much better than 6's, 7's, 8's, and 9's.

Of course, 16k hands is not much, just a nod to my particular run.

Kind of interesting though how much it suggests that with pairs, a good part of the results are probably due to hitting monsters. My pairs in limit didn't do nearly as well as my pairs in NL because the potential to make monster hands of them was far less. And 4's doing better than jacks just seems almost an impossibility in limit poker, and not all that likely even in no limit.

From my position of considerable non-expertise, I do tend to give some credit to not playing the lowest pairs all that hard, however. Pairs pick up some of their value from two-pair hands, and if one of your pair on a paired board is super low, or if your TOP pair in a two-pair hand is super low, your chances to win can be very small against other two-pair hands. At least when you have medium pairs, you can sometimes win in a pair to pair face-off when the both of you share the same pair that's on the board. Purely anecdotally, but also going on my stats in limit, which were about 150k too, this seems to happen frequently enough to matter.

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Because of the 5/10 rule, any pocket pair is playable from any position.

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From the book:
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"When contemplating calling a raise because your position is good, you have a clear call if the raise is less than 5% of your stack, and a clear fold if it is more than 10%. In between those numbers, use your judgement."

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Just being a little nit-picky. Is it definitely a good idea to call preflop raises OOP with a PP, assuming the 5/10 rule is satisfied? I would guess that the conditions would have to be even better if the raiser has position on you.

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Actually, the quote in the FAQ relates to playing suited connectors, where Ciaffone says you need good position to play them, provided the 5/10 rule is satisfied. He says that unlike a drawing hand, a set can get by without good position.