Middle pair...fold?

[cmillard]

This is just a general micro limit question, which I am sure may be hard to answer without knowing anything about the other players. I am in SB or BB and see the flop cheaply, end up hitting 2nd pair...this seems to happen to me quite often...and I usually get busted. Is it pretty much common practice to drop 2nd pair to any bets?

[Fantam]

You need to consider pot odds and the number of outs which you have to improve your hand, when making your decision.

Lets say that it is a rainbow flop, with your outs to 2 pair or trips not completing a possible straight for someone else. So lets say that you have 5 clean outs to improve your hand.

The chance of improving your hand by the turn would be 47:5 or approx 8.4:1. So you would like the pot to be offering you odds of at least 8:1 to call a bet.

You could probably reduce the size of the required pot slightly for the chance of making an additional bet if you improve your hand.

So basically, you want to get into the habit of calculating the chance of improving to hopefully the best hand based upon your number of outs.

This is pretty much unanswerable. Post a couple of example hands with your thought process on them and you will probably get some good feedback. Would be helpful for me to I think as these are tough situations.