Playing Medium-Low Pocket Pairs

You’re in a 9 person table, in mid position with a medium stack and you look down at pocket 8s.  After the small blind and big blind, the action is folded to you.  You’ve got 6 actions to consider behind you.  Play is relatively early in the tournament.

What I do here is raise 3.5x to 4x the blind (depending on how loose the action is).  This usually gets rid of the over-under type of hands like K7, A5, etc and those middle tier hands like J-10, Q-10, and maybe QJ.  Also, depending on what type of player your opponents perceive you as, you can suspect that the A-10, A-J, K-Q type of hands will give you a call.

With pocket 8s, pocket 9s, and pocket 7s, you want to make sure not to make an overplay and commit yourself to the hand when any 10,J, Q, K, or Ace will take you down.  Play them strong but don’t marry yourself to the hand.  If someone bets into you or makes a call on a follow-through bet by you, play with caution.

SXC.hu