Losing with 33 - some hands for inspection.

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The odds of flopping a set with a pocket pair are about 7.5:1.

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You need better odds for lower pp than higher ones, however, because you are significantly more likely to be facing an overset with 22 than with TT. While your implied odds can make up discrepancies preflop and make it profitable to play 33 with say, 4 other players, hitting your set only to have another player hit another set does tend to reduce this.

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oh and be as scared of oversets as you would be of royal flushes on a board of 33344 when your holding A3.

remember, the size of a situational mistake = individual +or- ev multiplied by the frequency with which that situation occurs.

the frequency of oversets is absolutely minimal, so forget it.

[blackaces13]

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The odds of flopping a set with a pocket pair are about 7.5:1.

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You need better odds for lower pp than higher ones, however, because you are significantly more likely to be facing an overset with 22 than with TT. While your implied odds can make up discrepancies preflop and make it profitable to play 33 with say, 4 other players, hitting your set only to have another player hit another set does tend to reduce this.

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It is so rare to lose set over set that the effect of such hands is probably rather small. More a factor as to why hands like 77 are better than 33 is that you make more winning straights with the higher PPs since you can make the high-end of a 4 card sraight and when the board pairs it is more often lower than your PP rendering you less vulnerable to an overfull by a flopped 2 pair.

[droolie]

Small pocket pairs prefer HU situations with momentum or multiway pots as a limper. Try to stay away from 3 and 4 way pots as much as possible with these hands. Consider folding or raising them from MP on depending on the table.

Hand 1: Fine. If you think the raiser is weak-tight you can try a donk or C/R- lead turn but this is fine as a default.

Hand 2: Fold the flop

Hand 3: Fold preflop or raise if the table is very tight.

Hand 4: Standard

Hand 5: (this one deserves it's own thread) Pf can be played anyway you feel like from fold to call to raise. I like raising to isolate and stealing on the flop if the table is tight.

The flop bet is meh but alright if the table is tight. It's kinda coordinated to take it down very often. I probably take the free turn and hope I get lucky cathing a set or OESDdraw.

The turn is standard.

River is too. He's not folding anything that you beat now.

Hand 6: Check fold the flop. Any large diamond raises your bet and then what do you do?

Hand 7: I like it.

[Disconnected]

Hand 1: I don't open with PP's so much as a default -- I like to be somewhat confident that it won't get raised behind me, and that I'll get several people playing. So, I would fold this hand pre-flop.

Hand 2: Even posting (from MP2 [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]), I wouldn't call a 3-bet. I want to either get to the flop cheap or open-raise in LP myself with a low PP. I also wouldn't call the flop bet. Here's a guy betting into a pf raiser and 3-bettor. I'd be afraid too of a check-raise coming behind me.

Hand 3: Still a little early for me to enter the pot preflop. There's a pretty good chance this low flop missed the raiser. I might donk the turn when the board pairs, but the calldown isn't that bad.

Hand 4: I might peel the flop closing the action and re-evaluate on the turn here. Your implied odds are pretty good, with good relative position if you hit. Also, PM me MP3's name, so I can add to my buddy list. MP1 as a runner-up What a table [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img].

Hand 5: Seems OK. Where do you think you messed up?

Hand 6: I wouldn't enter the pot or lead the flop.

Hand 7: I'd check behind the turn here. What sort of hand is that particular villain going to call on that dry a flop?

Edit: OK, read some replies about hand 5, and I would change to something more along droolie's line. If I thought I had a good chance to fold out the field behind me, I'd raise it up preflop, but I don't think limping with someone in already is that bad. Big change I would make is to check through the flop and re-evaluate. My original thinking is that anyone with an ace would have likely led that flop, but a weak ace might be check/calling, or depending on the table, I might be facing a check-raise. But if the turn checked through, I would bet it for value at that point.

[detruncate]

Hand 1: cue stale debate: you should limp when you expect favourable results most of the time. I fold when the situation doesn't look promising. That's really all there is to it.

Hand 2: you're probably getting enough in the way of implied odds to see the turn if neither of the pf aggressors c/r. Good board in that they're going to be unlikely to be pumping a draw with raising/3-betting hands. I still tend to be (overly)pessimistic about my chances of getting to the turn cheaply in situations like these unless I've seen both pf aggressors raise and check/call the flop a time or two, but it's probably ok to call.

Hand 3: I consider donking the turn. He can't love overs in a small pot with a paired board, but might be suspicious enough to call down. He probably bets the turn most of the time, but he might prefer to take a free card once you call the flop on that drawless board. If you're worried about being pushed off the best hand with a bluff raise you could always just check/call like you did and reevaluate on the river (in he's aggressive enough to raise he's almost certainly going to bet, so you're not concerned about giving a free card). I lead this river since he's unlikely to raise when ahead but might call with an ace. *Edit* apparently I'm retarded. I didn't think about the counterfeiting when I tacked on the last sentence during an edit.

Hand 4: you need to flop better in big pots. Can't believe you haven't figured that out by now. I fold where you did.

Hand 5: This is an easy fold pf unless you're happy raising or there's something about the table that you're not telling us (i.e., every player behind you is uber loose passive). I'm not happy raising unless the limper can be counted on to fold the flop too often, and even then I don't love playing 33 aggressively pre and post flop even with position. There was just a thread in HUSH about whether people raise small PPs for blind stealing purposes with loosish blinds and a surprising number said no if I remember the details correctly.

I don't think this flop is worth betting 4-way, but I'd probably be compelled to fire again on the turn if I bet the flop. I also can't see betting the river. BB has found some reason to make it this far. No reason to expect him to fold now, and there's really no way he calls with a worse hand.

Hand 6: I let this go on the flop. You're often going to get some action even when you're ahead, and your hand can't stand any.

Hand 7: I don't hate betting the flop I guess. There's a decent chance you're ahead and you might be able to push off second or third pair. When I'm called by BB, though, I'm done if his stats are accurate. Tight/passive players tend to show up on the later streets with lots of ammo. He didn't have to call pf (meaning that his pf tightness is moot), and there was a player left to act on the flop when he called so he's unlikely to have called particularly light. He hit this board and I doubt he's letting go. One of your best hopes was JT until the 8 fell. I just check the turn intending to fold UI. I suppose you could fire at the river after betting the turn since a weak/tight opponent would be unduly concerned about the A, though I still don't think he gives up often enough.

But I doubt that the stats are accurate since it's rare to find someone who finds a raise with 10% of their hands without finding more hands to play. And in any case, you don't say how often he makes it to showdown and probably don't have a good read on his play if there's room for debate since a player dependent bet would be difficult to argue over.

If I think the chances of being ahead and/or taking the pot down on the turn are sufficient to justify the turn bet then I probably fire again at the river. But I still think we're done once the flop bet is called on a ragged board. He's unlikely to fold anything that he saw fit to call the flop with and the Ace shouldn't be scary unless he's suffers from a chronic case of MUBS. If the pot were bigger and he might have peeled looking for 2-pair then a turn follow up makes more sense. Likewise if he was more likely to be on a draw.

Whew. That's a whole lotta 33. I'm also not very confident playing low PPs so I'm looking forward to reading other responses.

[Aaron W.]

Hand 1: Limping is fine, but it's getting to the point where you must worry that you're not going to get enough limpers behind you. Three folds in front of you and you definitely shouldn't be open-limping. Postflop is fine, but with only a king on the board, you might consider playing back sometimes (read dependent, as always).

Hand 2: Good

Hand 3: I would check-raise the flop or donk the turn. Probably a flop check-raise because I want to make him fold before the river if possible.

Hand 4: Closing the action getting 17:1, this is a definite peel.

Hand 5: Good

Hand 6: I check-fold. This spot is bad enough that it's not worth making a play at the pot.

Hand 7: The flop bet is okay, but I don't follow through on the turn unless I have reason to think he's going to fold.

The frequency of oversets is not minimal. It happens occasionally. Individual pocket pairs are dealt .45 of the time * 13 different pairs * 8 other people in a hand so you're facing another pocket pair about 46 percent of the time, especially if we assume in a small stakes game every pocket pair will be played.

We hit our set about 1/8 of the time. But villain's (potential) pocket pair also hits about 1/16 of the time - losing a 20+ BB pot 1/16 of the time that you flop a set is not an insignificant and tends to reduce your implied odds by a BB or two. Comparing this to a straight flush when you have quads is a straw man argument.

I'm not saying we should fear the monsters under the bed, I'm saying oversets are one of the many reasons smaller pocket pairs are more vulnerable than larger ones. Other reasons include ability to hold up unimproved vs. 1-2 opponents, high card strength when there's a 4-flush out there and losing a pot when you're ahead but a second overpair appears on the board and gives you a worthless 3-pair.

[Aaron W.]

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The frequency of oversets is not minimal. It happens occasionally. Individual pocket pairs are dealt .45 of the time * 13 different pairs * 8 other people in a hand so you're facing another pocket pair about 46 percent of the time, especially if we assume in a small stakes game every pocket pair will be played.

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The frequency of oversets is actually quite minimal. Your calculation is off because you can't just multiply those numbers all together and get a reasonable result. The events become less and less independent as the number of dealt cards increases. You have also double-counted the pocket pair that you hold. I don't have time to run out the entire calculation here, but I suspect that you only run into another pocket pair (given that you hold a pocket pair), somewhere on the order of 25% of the time.

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We hit our set about 1/8 of the time. But villain's (potential) pocket pair also hits about 1/16 of the time

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This isn't true, either. Suppose you knew you that villain had a pocket pair and you flopped a set. What are the chances of him also flopping a set? You know 5 cards (your pocket pair, his pocket pair, and your set card). There are 47 unknown cards in the deck, two of which help villain. So the probability that one of those two cards shows up on the flop (two draws) is 1 - (45/47)(44/46) = 14%. So when you *KNOW* that villain has a pocket pair, 14% of the time he hits a set. If my 25% number above is correct, then you run into set over set 3.5% of the time which is about 27.5:1 against. This is approaching the realm of insignificant.

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losing a 20+ BB pot 1/16 of the time that you flop a set is not an insignificant and tends to reduce your implied odds by a BB or two.

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Well, when the pot size is 20+ BB, you probably only put in 5-6 big bets yourself. So you're not losing as much as you think you are.

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Other reasons include ability to hold up unimproved vs. 1-2 opponents, high card strength when there's a 4-flush out there and losing a pot when you're ahead but a second overpair appears on the board and gives you a worthless 3-pair.

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This is a red herring. We're discussing hands based PURELY on their set potential. Worrying about 4-flushes and double paired boards have little to do with this argument.

[Eeegah]

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the frequency of oversets is absolutely minimal, so forget it.

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There's about a ten percent difference in equity between a set of deuces and a set of aces. That's not huge, but it's not trivial.

Aaron, the single pocket pair I'm holding does little to drop the odds. It's a lot closer to 46 % than 25 %, that's for sure. I am holding one of 26 pocket pairs. If you rule out those two cards that I'm holding, there's still plenty of ways to make pocket pairs.

I'm not trying to say oversets are a good enough reason to avoid playing pocket pairs. I AM saying that oversets, 3-pair, flush potential and other matters should be considered when we factor in whether there's good enough odds to play a pocket pair. These factors aren't "red herrings" because I was replying to the poster who was critisizing a suggestion that 22-44 should be treated differently than 55 and 66. Oversets are one of these reasons.