When do you guys set mine? What makes it profitable?

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When do you guys set mine? What makes it profitable?

OP
52 posts · member since Jun 2010
8mo ago

I’ve been thinking a lot about small/medium pocket pairs in live cash games (mostly 1/2 and 2/5).

When do you guys

11 October 2025 at 08:49 AM
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NittyOldMan1 avatar
1308 posts · member since Sep 2014
8mo ago

its really profitable super deep vs. guys who bet big with one pair and then cant let it go to aggression. sadly thats becoming pretty rare. they also work as bluffs in position when you block hands like straights (a good bluff for example is if you have 77, the board is 865, and the turn or river completes a flush draw when your opponent is capped at one pair), or as bluffcatchers heads up vs ranges with lots of high cards - again, in position only.

until recently i played small pairs almost always. i now dump them up front without thinking, and i fold them to a raise if im likely to get sandwiched. still obviously calling in position multiway.

deuceblocker avatar
4498 posts · member since Apr 2019
8mo ago
by NittyOldMan1

its profitable super deep vs. guys who bet big with one pair and then cant let it go to aggression. sadly thats becoming pretty rare.

If you mean HU, I agree. It usually isn't a good hand HU.

However a set beats two pair, not just one pair, and 5-ways there is a good chance someone will make two pair. Plus you have good immediate odds multiway.

deuceblocker avatar
4498 posts · member since Apr 2019
8mo ago

I shouldn't be giving such good advice in a public forum.

If you all don't want to play bingo with small pps 5-ways in a 1/3 game, go ahead and fold.

Rococo avatar
7956 posts · member since Jul 2004
8mo ago

I agree that it isn't usually profitable to play low pocket pairs in early position in higher stakes games, but I do it occasionally in tough, deep games, especially if I have the right image. I do it mainly because the jackpot potential can be very high when an aggro player really, really doesn't expect me to have flopped a set of 4s.

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RaiseAnnounced avatarRaiseAnnounced
8mo ago

Poker's been so widely available for so long that the number of players and scenarios where you're fist pumping over getting the 3rd nuts all in for 1000bbs are overwhelmingly dominated by the number of times you'll have to actually use your brain and play poker.

Obviously caveats abound: a lot of people play in juicy NYC home games that is still functionally like Bush-era poker, there are individual whales who (once you get deep enough against them) you loathe to fold any set+ maker, etc.

And even more obviously, the ability to make a set is a major contributor to any pocket pair's EV against any player in any sufficiently deep-stack scenario. It's just that the times that you're purely "set mining" (just saying "I have pocket pair and the call:effective stacks are x, therefore I call) should be pretty exceptional.

Pocket pairs are high-key the most fascinating preflop hand type across all stacks and configurations for a lot of reasons, not all of which are relevant here.

Basically have two favorable qualities that are in tension with each other: 1) they have very stable hot-and-cold equity versus any but the tightest ranges, but have a very hard time getting to showdown with them at a high frequency; 2) They have highly profitable tail-end scenarios (ie: flopping a set) that make up the difference of all the times they fold their equity in other scenarios.

So the wider someone's preflop range is and the more passive they are postflop, the more likely you are to realize your hot-and-cold equity. The tighter someone's preflop range is and/or the lighter they stackoff postflop, the more the tail-end scenarios can carry the EV burden on its own. These aren't strictly mutually exclusive, but it tends to make it so that your equity realization is kind of just broadly and evenly "very good" across scenarios, even though the source of your realization is all over the map.

Equilibrium often converges at the point where the aggressor's sizes and ranges make low pocket pairs indifferent between folding and calling at a small frequency. So if there are other fish donating EV to the system with nonsense cold calls and double-call type lines, then this tends to make these hands pure continues. A trillion caveats here about configs where this isn't true, it's very contingent on sizes and ranges whether you yourself are entering the pot cold, etc, but I'm just illustrating how the set mine crowd and the charts crowd are going to end up giving similar answers in a lot of scenarios.

But the justification matters: it will effect how much you give up on the pot just because you didn't hit a set, how much you consider card rank, how much you consider implied odds on everyone's stack as opposed to direct odds, etc....

deuceblocker avatardeuceblocker
8mo ago

I set mine almost always in 1/3 games. There are exceptions. If it is going HU, it usually isn't profitable to play a small pp. Also, sometimes in a 3! pot you aren't getting odds. I sometimes 3! 99-TT when I think I have the best hand. Don't like 3!ing 88. Usually open raise with small pps and only open limp in special situations. Sometimes raise limpers with small pps and sometimes limp behind.

Usually, when I miss with a small pp, I am done with it. With 88-TT, often you are ahead unimproved. Generally, they are not good hands to bluff with, as they don't make many draws. There are some situations when you can call a small flop bet multiway in position, partly to draw to 2 outs and partly to bluff if everyone seems weak. Sometimes you can make straight draws and have a fairly strong hand without a set.

In some mid stakes games, were there is a lot of 3-betting and not many multiway pots, small pps should often be folded in ep. In those situations, they should only be played when you know a multiway pot is likely. For example you can overcall with them.

I don't think solvers are terribly useful for this, because it is about the dynamics of multiple loose/passive players. You can look at multiway, but even then it assumes correct play. Part of the value is bad players playing wide ranges and stacking off with 2-pair....