When you’re playing No Limit Hold ‘Em poker online, in every hand, your entire stack is potentially in play. This is an important caveat to remember, because once it’s gone, it’s gone, and it can happen all in one hand. I say that in lieu of the advice I’m about to give on playing a low pocket pair in the cutoff. Basically, what you need to take away from this is that you can’t fall in love with matching hole cards.
There are three elements I want to touch on here. First, let’s consider stack size. The blinds are 100/200 and the starting stacks are 50,000. Now when the stacks are this deep, you have more liberty to see a little bit more if you’re in a later position. Suited connectors, and bigger aces are playable here by just calling since the stacks are so deep. So unless a crazy raise is placed in front of you, you should be ok in being a little more liberal in seeing flops.
The next thing I want to touch on is your hand. In this situation, you’re dealt a small pocket pair, 77. The person under the gun raises it up to 800, 4 big blinds. Do you call or do you fold? Well it depends on the rest of the action. With a stack behind you of 50,000, I think in any situation where you only have to sacrifice 800 here to see a flop in late position, you’re fairly safe.
Finally, let’s talk about the caution you have to have here. Being deep stacked is great when you’re looking to see a flop, but with a low pocket pair in late position, and a raise under the gun, you have to be very careful. UTG raises are generally to be taken seriously. Usually big pairs AA-QQ or AK suited or not, or AQ suited are the common ranges for tight-aggressive players. That being said, when you see the flop, you have to be expecting to hit it hard or get out. If you flop a set, there’s a good chance you can make some money from the initial raiser. Or maybe you flop an open ended straight, you may be ok to take small bets to the river. But if you completely whiff, you have to remember to tell yourself, just because your hole cards match, doesn’t automatically make you a winner. It’s okay to fold a pair, even if you would have won sometimes. If you don’t fold the winning hand sometimes, you’ve never really played poker. Remember this next time you’re at the casino.
