Small pocket pairs in late position

[Luke]

When playing in the CO or on the button in an unraised pot when do you raise your small to medium pocket pairs? If there are 4 limpers to you in the CO would you pop pocket 5s? How about 1 limper to you in the button with pocket 6s? 5 limpers to you in the button with pocket 2s?

Tinker with the variables (# of limpers, CO vs. button, looseness of blinds and limpers, etc.) and share how you play these small pairs.

[Aces McGee]

In a typical low-limit game, I would only raise my small-medium pocket pairs (say, 99-22) in late position if I was opening or if there was only one limper to me. With four or five limpers, it's not even close...your set odds are almost there (probably made up for by implied odds, anyway) and you aren't going to get enough people to fold to make your hand best if overcards come.

Aces McGee

[Nottom]

I very rarely raise small pairs preflop unless I'm trying to get heads up or steal the blinds. If you wanted to raise a bunce of limpers you really need 8-10 in order for your raise to have much value.

[rigoletto]

I would raise 4-5 limpers on the button if:

1) I'm not likely to be 3-bet!
2) I have a good chance of getting checked to on the flop!

[John Feeney]

Others are addressing other aspects of your question. I'll just touch on the issue of whether, and when, to raise with several limpers ahead of you. This depends largely (not entirely) on whether you think your raise and the inflated pot it creates will trigger an effect of "tying on" players after the flop such that they hang around when they're drawing almost dead with hands they'd have folded in a smaller pot. If you expect this effect to occur to a sufficient degree, then raising will increase your EV. To ballpark it, I'd say you need to expect a hefty, but not enormous tie-on effect.

[agenbite]

This is my first post here.

My 2 cents on small/medium pairs is I believe limping and hoping to flop a set is the only way to play them profitably in the long run (especially in NLHE, which is my game). The only thing pre-flop raising will do is isolate the power hands, which will beat little/medium pairs the majority of time when paint hits the board.

[John Feeney]

Welcome, agenbite. Yes, NL is a totally different animal. The tie-on effect I described for the limit game would not really be a factor as much as fundamental considerations of implied odds related to opponents' stack sizes and such.