How To Play Small Pocket Pairs in SNG Tournaments – Beginners Introduction
When you play sit and go tournaments you'll often find that you get small pocket pairs and you need to know how to play them. Small pocket pairs always seem like a strong hand, but more often then not I would say they lose. Depending on what stage the sit and go tournament is at will reflect how you play your small pocket pairs and we'll take a look at this now.
Early Stages
In the early stages of a sit and go tournament you'll want to make sure you're careful with making over-bets on your small pocket pairs. There isn't much value in stealing blinds in the early stages so there is no reason to raise low pocket pairs. You should limp into the pot and try to hit a set on the flop. If you do then you could win a monster pot and if you don't then you can get out of the hand without it costing you too many of your chips. Sets don't hit too often so don't expect to hit your set, which means you shouldn't invest many chips in low pocket pairs early in a sit and go tournament unless you hit your set.
Middle Stages
As blinds begin to slowly increase and you're forced to start making some moves small pocket pairs become better hands. Since the blinds are higher now you can't really limp into the pot and hope to hit a set because most times you won't. You need to make a decision based on your evaluations of the tournament on whether you should fold the small pair or raise them up. If you raise them up then you need to be strong on the flop if someone happens to call. You're basically committed once you make the first raise so make sure you're ready to throw your chips in the pot on your small pocket pair before making the raise.
Late Stages
When blinds have skyrocketed and the players are becoming a lot lower then pocket pairs become even stronger. Your move is to basically go all-in and take the blinds, if you happen to get called you just need to hope they have two over cards and not an over pair. Poker is gambling so there is no for sure way to determine if you'll win the pot which means you need to decide whether your low pocket pair is good enough to throw all your chips in. If it is then go all-in and either take the pot down or go heads-up with someone to double up.
When someone raises you before you can raise the pot with low pocket pairs it makes the decision to play the hand a lot harder. It's also best to be the player putting the chips into the pot and putting the pressure on the other player. So if you're raised with small pocket pairs your option is to either fold or go all-in. You'll either be called or you'll win the blinds plus the other players raise. You should check the size of the stack of the raiser though because if there low stacked then they will most likely call a re-raise. If there a medium or higher stack then they most likely won't want to risk their stack unless they have a monster hand which is the risk you take when re-raising all-in with low pocket pairs.
