Small Pairs on the (pre)Bubble

[tsevier]

I feel like every time I get this type of hand I don't know how to play it. Your input is greatly appreciated.


Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t100 (7 handed) converter (http://www.selachian.com/tools/bisonconverter/hhconverter.cgi)

MP1 (t1265)
MP2 (t1015)
CO (t730)
Button (t655)
SB (t1295)
BB (t1830)
Hero (t1210)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 5/images/graemlins/club.gif, 5/images/graemlins/diamond.gif.

What's next?

[wuwei]

You are UTG with 6 players left to act, and you aren't desperate. This is a fold for me.

[The Yugoslavian]

Easy fold.

Yugoslav

[tsevier]

Thanks guys. I need all the help I can get. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[dfscott]

This seems to be the theme of the week -- I posted a hand similar to this, as well. I got the same responses, but I wanted to think through the logic to get to the "correct" play. Here's my thought process on this (more experienced heads please feel free to correct me).

With a small pair, I want to either be all-in before the flop (and hope everyone folds) or limp and hope to flop a set. Otherwise, I'm likely in a race situation with overcards which is not an easy hand to play.

To limp (call), I generally follow the 5/10 rule -- I can call for 5% of my stack or less. If calling would be 10% or more of my stack, I need to raise. (Between 5 and 10 is the gray area.) Calling the BB here is 8% of my stack, which is too close to 10 for me.

So, now I have to raise if I'm going to play this hand. If I raise a standard 3BB raise, it's highly likely that I'll get a call with this many players. And with 55, I'm almost guaranteed to get overcards on the flop. In this case, I'm out of position, so what do I do when the flop comes K84r?

So, if I play I don't want to have to play post-flop. That means I might be sticking in 30% of my stack and practically auto-folding on the turn if I miss. So, I could increase my FE and just go all-in, but do I really want to go all-in with this hand? I don't think so.

So, I can't call, a standard raise makes playing the flop very difficult, and I don't want to go all-in this early with this holding.

That leaves one option...