Parameters for calling a raise preflop with a low/medium pocket pair

[zyrrth]

Whats the rule of 5 & 10?

[jetsetboy]

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Whats the rule of 5 & 10?

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You should read all of the thread you can find in the SSNL and µNL FAQ.

The 5/10 rules is a basically : you have a drawing hand (small pp, SCs) someone is raising in front of you. You should allways call if the raise is less than 5% of the effective stack and fold if it is more than 10%. Between it's kind of 10000 variables-dependant.

[D.L.M.]

VVNH sanchez, i think you gave a bit too much away..... that being said....... if any of you [censored] try to do that [censored] to me ill own you.......and you better all transfer sanchez some monies cause that post was really good stuff, that most people have to figure out on their own.

[Berge20]

That's why were here D-man. Learn from each and improve.

Excellent post DS.

[solvine]

great post. I wondered what your thoughts were on reraising pf oop. Say you have a tag who is 13/7/7 and is on your right. You are in the blinds and hold a low-mid pp and are facing a raise from him. Would you reraise pf or wait to evaluate flop? One thing i have always thought about is say that u call oop with a pp and flop comes 10 7 6 rainbow, do you put a c/r in hoping he will fold? What would tag do if he was say raising J10,q10 and faces the raise?

[dirtysanchez]

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VVNH sanchez, i think you gave a bit too much away..... that being said....... if any of you [censored] try to do that [censored] to me ill own you.......and you better all transfer sanchez some monies cause that post was really good stuff, that most people have to figure out on their own.

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yes i forgot to tell all of you that DLM and I know the super secret counter strategy so it doesnt work against us

[futuredoc85]

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great post. I wondered what your thoughts were on reraising pf oop. Say you have a tag who is 13/7/7 and is on your right. You are in the blinds and hold a low-mid pp and are facing a raise from him. Would you reraise pf or wait to evaluate flop? One thing i have always thought about is say that u call oop with a pp and flop comes 10 7 6 rainbow, do you put a c/r in hoping he will fold? What would tag do if he was say raising J10,q10 and faces the raise?

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if someone is 13/7/7 i think 3-betting them light is probably a bad idea, and i think there is more value in playing a small pair for set-value than trying to steal pots from players like this. the stats you gave are basically the ideal player to set-mine against.

as far as what a TAG will do with TP decent kicker in teh hand you described, that really depends on your history with him, table dynamics at the time, how often youve c/r him, and the actual TAG in question. everyone will react differently in different spots.

[raistlinx]

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Ok there are ways to play medium/low pps for value other than set value. (they can sometimes be played for showdown value as an overpair cheaply but those spots are pretty obvious generally and apply much more to mid pairs than low pairs)

1) floating- often we may call an early or mid-position raise from a TAG player with a hand like 66-88 preflop and see a flop heads up. if the flop comes all unders, or with 1 over that doesnt hit much of a TAGs raising range, we can expect most players to c-bet 100% of their preflop raising range a good % of the time. i will often call a c-bet with a small overpair because a common leak in these games (IMO) is that people do not fire a 2nd-barrel without a made hand. if the turn blanks and he fires again, we can confidently fold what is almost surely the 2nd best hand. if he checks, he almost always has missed completely, and will fold to a turn bet very often. obviously all of these parameters are not met very often, so we will not be floating very often. even used sparingly, this will add nicely to your winrate with small pairs and help make up for the times you miss your set/dont get paid when you hit your set. this should usually be done against ABC TAGs who will not often get tricky on us postflop, and should almost always be done from in position

2) check/raising scary flops- this applies more to playing small-medium pairs from the blinds. if a TAG or even LAG raises from LP, we cannot call with a small pair for set value because they will not stack off often enough to give us proper implied odds. by nature, this means they will often have low suited cards or small-medium pairs themselves. so when we call from the blinds with 44 and the flop comes A73 rainbow, we can expect villain to c-bet 100% of their raising range in a HU pot a large % of the time. because they opened in LP, their range is fairly wide and often whiffs this board completely. if we check/raise this flop occasionally, ABC players will usually fold all pps that dont have a set, often including JJ-KK, SCs, and KQ,KJ,QJ type hands. note that because we are OOP, we should be extra sure villain will not get tricky on us before attempting this, and we should do this even less often than floating.

Please remember that these plays should be used very sparingly (even more so at micro-stakes, where players are more liable to slowplay made hands postflop, and are also more exploitable in many other ways). IMO though, having these plays in your arsenal is a great way to add a ptbb/100 or so to your winrate , while at the same time giving you the added advantage of those nitty raisers who dont want to stack off thinking you are FOS on occasion when you do hit your set.

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This is not true. They don't have to stack off often to give us implied odds. Say we are in the BB and face a standard 3x raise, we are getting 2-1 to call (our blind doesn't count as it isn't ours anymore). After the flop we will only need to pick up twice what is in the pot (12bb giving us 8-1) to make this profitable.

Obviously there will be times we hit our set and still lose so we do need to pick up a bit more but my point here is that we hardly need to stack him everytime to make the call profitable. Assuming he is full stacked we only need to get roughly 1/5 of his stack so the few times we do stack someone with AA or KK more than make up for those times he was bluffing and we don't win anything more after the flop giving us a freeroll.

[futuredoc85]

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Ok there are ways to play medium/low pps for value other than set value. (they can sometimes be played for showdown value as an overpair cheaply but those spots are pretty obvious generally and apply much more to mid pairs than low pairs)

1) floating- often we may call an early or mid-position raise from a TAG player with a hand like 66-88 preflop and see a flop heads up. if the flop comes all unders, or with 1 over that doesnt hit much of a TAGs raising range, we can expect most players to c-bet 100% of their preflop raising range a good % of the time. i will often call a c-bet with a small overpair because a common leak in these games (IMO) is that people do not fire a 2nd-barrel without a made hand. if the turn blanks and he fires again, we can confidently fold what is almost surely the 2nd best hand. if he checks, he almost always has missed completely, and will fold to a turn bet very often. obviously all of these parameters are not met very often, so we will not be floating very often. even used sparingly, this will add nicely to your winrate with small pairs and help make up for the times you miss your set/dont get paid when you hit your set. this should usually be done against ABC TAGs who will not often get tricky on us postflop, and should almost always be done from in position

2) check/raising scary flops- this applies more to playing small-medium pairs from the blinds. if a TAG or even LAG raises from LP, we cannot call with a small pair for set value because they will not stack off often enough to give us proper implied odds. by nature, this means they will often have low suited cards or small-medium pairs themselves. so when we call from the blinds with 44 and the flop comes A73 rainbow, we can expect villain to c-bet 100% of their raising range in a HU pot a large % of the time. because they opened in LP, their range is fairly wide and often whiffs this board completely. if we check/raise this flop occasionally, ABC players will usually fold all pps that dont have a set, often including JJ-KK, SCs, and KQ,KJ,QJ type hands. note that because we are OOP, we should be extra sure villain will not get tricky on us before attempting this, and we should do this even less often than floating.

Please remember that these plays should be used very sparingly (even more so at micro-stakes, where players are more liable to slowplay made hands postflop, and are also more exploitable in many other ways). IMO though, having these plays in your arsenal is a great way to add a ptbb/100 or so to your winrate , while at the same time giving you the added advantage of those nitty raisers who dont want to stack off thinking you are FOS on occasion when you do hit your set.

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This is not true. They don't have to stack off often to give us implied odds. Say we are in the BB and face a standard 3x raise, we are getting 2-1 to call (our blind doesn't count as it isn't ours anymore). After the flop we will only need to pick up twice what is in the pot (12bb giving us 8-1) to make this profitable.

Obviously there will be times we hit our set and still lose so we do need to pick up a bit more but my point here is that we hardly need to stack him everytime to make the call profitable. Assuming he is full stacked we only need to get roughly 1/5 of his stack so the few times we do stack someone with AA or KK more than make up for those times he was bluffing and we don't win anything more after the flop giving us a freeroll.

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obviously its debatable but i think when someone opens in late position we are rarely going to pick up more than a c-bet and often not even that (depending on how we play it). it obviously depends on the actual player who raised and how lightly they will put money into the pot. good point though and i think its possible to show a small net winrate by playing that spot purely for set-value, i just dont believe its a certainty.

[mack848]

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What do you look for when deciding whether to call a PFR with a pocket pair?
1) Raiser must have a stack at least 10x the size of his raise. (Preferably 20x)
2) Must have position on Raiser (unless there are other callers) Seems like its always -ev to call a PFR with a pocket pair OOP
3) Raiser must be somewhat aggressive and willing to stack off with overpairs. Its pretty hard to find these kind of players nowadays [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]
4) Raiser must enter pot from early/mid position. Late position raises are usually just trying to take down the blinds and rarely pay off if you hit a set.


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1. Agree - I look for 15x personally.
2. Disagree - You don't need position for a call to be +EV, so long as the opponent is very aggressive or bad IMO.
3. Disagree. I believe that you only need win ~40BB on average to call a 4BB raise with a PP.
4. Agree, but I like to 3bet steal raises with a PP.