I love pears! And in poker I really love to find pairs in my hole cards. My heart wants to play them every time, but I know that’s not a good blanket rule. Any advice to offer on when and how to indulge my love of pairs in poker?
I would say when you have a pair of French Butter Pears in the hole
For big pocket pairs like KK and AA, maybe QQ, you should almost always raise enough to limit the field to 1 or 2 players. At a full 9 seat table, AA is about 35%, but if your bet is called by a single opponent, your equity goes to about 85%, or about 73% when you get two callers. There’re a few special cases where you might not raise, but these are rare.
99-JJ or maybe 88-JJ do have some showdown value on some runouts. I see these as the trickiest to play post flop. Take a passive or aggro line depending on stack, blinds, position, and all that, but best to procede with a little caution.
I’ll sometimes limp smaller pairs when in decent position. The way I see it, I’ll flop a set about 1 in 8. If stacks are such that someone in the pot can pay me at least 10 times what it costs to see the flop, i will usually take a look, especially if I’m in position. 15 times is better, and anything over that is an insta-call.
Oh, and if I’m the preflop aggressor, Ill generally fire a c-bet no matter the board.
What about the pears ?
Absolutely! What about 'em?!
I love ‘em. Pears get no respect
I always throw away the pair of aces knowing that someone is probably holding on to other aces so thier dead to me. KK, QQ I hold on too and JJ is my favorite to sneak two pairs in or trips or a boat. I’m really partial to Jacks. They get no respect.