3 Crushing Tips for Playing Pocket Pairs Preflop in Tough No-Limit Hold'em Games

In weak no-limit Hold'em games, we can get away with simply raising and reraising preflop with big pairs and calling with medium and small pairs to try to hit sets. However, in tough no-limit Hold'em games you'll encounter many stronger players who are aware of these lower-level tactics and will easily be able to put you on a hand, which will drastically lower your profits. To adjust to these more difficult games, you'll need to make three key adjustments to how you play pocket pairs preflop.

The first adjustment is to stop playing the lowest pocket pairs out of position. If you're dealt pocket Threes in early position and it folds to you, that should be a fold. If a player in late position open-raises and it's folded to you in the blinds with pocket Fives, that should also be a fold. The smallest pocket pairs are only very happy on flops that hit a set, which happens around 11.5% of the time. Since you're going to be out of position against a good player for the rest of the hand, it's unlikely that you will win a large pot since your opponents will be less likely to pay you off with hands like top pair and overpairs. Getting opponents to pay you off with these hands will be a large portion of your profit against weaker players, but it just isn't a profitable play against tough opponents.

The second key change you should make to your preflop play with pocket pairs is to identify who is doing a lot of reraising preflop. If you have someone to your left who likes to do a lot of reraising preflop, then you can slowplay your big pairs when facing a raise by just calling. The purpose of this play is that when the opponent left to act after you reraises, you have trapped them in a huge pot where they will have a really hard time folding because of all of the dead money. This is a great tactic to use against the typical young Internet players who are hyper-aggressive preflop.

Finally, the third major preflop adjustment you have to make with your pocket pairs when transitioning from easy games to tough games is to size your preflop raises with medium pairs so that you'll be able to call a reraise in position getting the correct odds to hit a set and stack someone. If the stacks are 80 big blinds and you open raise to 5 big blinds in late position with pocket Nines, when your opponents reraise it will usually be to at least 12-15 big blinds which will not allow you the 15-to-1 odds you need to call, so you'll have to fold. Instead, you should plan ahead with these medium-strength pocket pair hands by sizing your raises more intelligently.

If you implement these three critical ideas into your preflop play when you're dealt a pocket pair, you'll be well on your way to holding your own and eventually dominating the more difficult no-limit Hold'em games you'll play it, both live and on the Internet.