How Good Is 2-Pair?

I was fortunate enough to get two-pair about 6 times in the course of 2 hours last night. I'm not talking about K9 flopping 977 (pair and a board pair). I'm talking K9 flopping KJ9.

In almost every case I put in a 2/3 to pot-size bet and took it down right there, picking up a dollar or two each time. One time I got a caller to the river and won about $5. And one time I got re-raised big and folded (which I think was a bad play, see http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...ic.php?t=11142.

Two pair is not strong enough to slow play (not much is) and can be counterfitted if the board pairs up. But KJ9 is a miracle flop for K9, right? Having this happen 6 times in a couple of hours felt like a real rush of cards, but only netted me $10?

So what are your thoughts on 2-Pair. How to play it, when to fold it, can you comfortably push with it. And how does your play differ when you have the top-two-pair or the bottom two?

no miracle flop for K9 is 999 or KKK

QJT gives AK a bigger straight

2 pair is good enough to continue, but i wouldnt put much stake in it.

"two pair is not a liscense to print money"

bet it, but know when to let it go.

if you got K9 and I got JJ on that flop. I will take your stack

top 2 pair is a monster, but a vulnerable monster

lower 2 pairs can be counterfeited, so don't go broke

I wouldn't be dissapointed with your results from your two pair. You could try a check raise with it though.

There is no hand that I hate havign more than 2 pair. I cannot even begin to tell you how much money I have lost with 2-pair beaten by a straight or flush draw hitting.

It makes perfect sense why this happens so often. However, that doesn't make it any less frustrating.

I prefer to check-raise two pair on the flop if there are several other players in the hand, and I am 95% sure one of them will bet. You don't want to check and have it check around. If I am less confident in that opening bet, I'll take the lead with a pot-sized bet and see what happens.

Two pair is a dangerous hand. You can own with it, or you can get owned... it's just hard for your opponents to sniff out, and hard to get away from if you have it. I don't put much stock in two pair hands that aren't top two pair; I want to take the pot down on the flop if at all possible. So I bet and raise aggressively with those hands. Top two I might be content to sit back and be less aggressive at first, especially if they are higher cards (i.e. KQ on a KQ5 board). That doesn't mean checking it around, but maybe I'll bet less than the pot to encourage calls from average players.

With any two pair in a full ring, I don't recommend pushing all-in as soon as possible. Give yourself time to make informed decisions. Let's say a player raises pre-flop 3xBB, and I call with JT suited. The flop comes AJT two-suited. I check, he bets the pot, I check-raise him... and he raises me right back. This is a good point at which to ponder, what's he got? All of these are feasible holdings:

- AK or AQ; he flopped top pair + a gutshot draw on a dangerous board, thinks he's ahead, and wants to take it down right now
- AJ or AT; he's ahead of you and you're basically screwed
- KQ, see above
- pocket tens, pocket jacks, pocket queens, pocket kings, pocket aces; he could have a set and be way ahead with trips, or he could have second pair + a gutshot draw and be pretty fearless with that hand
- He could also be on some combination of a pair with a flush draw, which will make people a bit reckless

So his range of hands is fairly broad, and he just bet and re-raised. IMO you don't want to see a turn card because whatever he's got, if he's behind it could help him move in front, and if you're behind it's not likely to help you no matter what it is. So find out now. Raise him one more time - even though it's getting expensive - without going all-in just yet. See what he does. If he just calls, you may learn that you're ahead, and if the turn card is harmless that would be a good point to get all your money in. If he goes all-in you have a difficult decision to make. Good luck. Personally, I might fold unless I had a read on the player telling me otherwise.

By the way, here's a pretty good story about two pair. I was hosting a short-handed (5 person) cash game at my home. All regulars, we knew each other's style very well. I was on the button with AT suited. One guy had limped ahead of me; I raised 3xBB, it folded back around to him and he called. So we saw the flop just the two of us. He's very much a classic TAgg player, which is how I play in those games as well.

The flop comes down ATx two-suited. He bets out the full pot, which I figured to be him repping an ace (not just repping it - actually holding it, also) and trying to take control of the hand. I happily gave him my "I'm serious" raise - about three times his bet. Usually at this point is when he'd give me the staredown for a minute and then fold. Instead, he glances at me and says, "OK, I'm all in."

This is early in the evening and we both have basically our full buy-in in front of us, so we're talking about a hefty re-raise to me. It might have been 4 or 5 times what I had raised to. So I thought about it, and thought, and thought. I couldn't put him on any kind of draw, he's too tight for that. I couldn't put him on AK or AQ because he would have opened with it; even less likely, trip aces. He might have made the lower set with the x card but it really seemed like he had pocket 10s. The only other thing I could figure was that he had two pair also - and since he'd probably not call a raise with Ax or Tx, that meant he had AT like me. So my quandary was, are we chopping, or am I way behind and about to lose my stack? I must have thought about that for two solid minutes.

Finally I called. I had to. He flipped AT, the turn and river changed nothing (although I did end up with a four-flush) and we chopped it. He shook my hand afterward and said "good call"; I was still shaking a little bit over it. Wasn't that much money at stake really, but there's something unnerving about having to call any all-in like that so early in the night. Afterward the only thing I wished is that I would have been able to beat him into the pot with the push, and made him make the difficult decision instead of me.

Important to remember that two pair is NEVER the nuts.

I used to hate QQ a LOT but now i love it. Now, I hate two pair more than anything. Ill take TPTK any day - at least that doesnt make feel as guilty for folding it.

Whenever I flop twopair I get all excited but then I remember all the times two pairs have just bent me over and had at me with screwdrivers so I get pissed off because I know Im about to be drawn out on.

Goddammit fucking piece of shit two pairs!! Whores!
***** Hand History for Game 2006816156 *****
$100 NL Hold'em - Friday, May 06, 03:45:56 EDT 2005
Table Table 36593 (6 max) (Real Money)
Seat 4 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: beas007 ( $211.93 )
Seat 2: syri02 ( $25.05 )
Seat 3: Gonzaga0 ( $180.18 )
Seat 5: Eldor84 ( $39 )
Seat 6: TRex44 ( $83.2 )
Seat 4: SlappYou ( $81.5 )
Eldor84 posts small blind [$0.5].
TRex44 posts big blind [$1].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to SlappYou [ 8s 9h ]
beas007 raises [$4].
syri02 calls [$4].
Gonzaga0 folds.
SlappYou calls [$4].
Eldor84 folds.
TRex44 folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 8h, 9d, Jh ]
beas007 bets [$55].
syri02 folds.
SlappYou is all-In [$77.5]
beas007 calls [$22.5].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 6c ]
** Dealing River ** [ 6h ]
beas007 shows [ Js, Qc ] two pairs, jacks and sixes.
SlappYou doesn't show [ 8s, 9h ] two pairs, nines and eights.
beas007 wins $166.5 from the main pot with two pairs, jacks and sixes.

Originally Posted by dalecooper

IMO you don't want to see a turn card because whatever he's got, if he's behind it could help him move in front, and if you're behind it's not likely to help you no matter what it is. So find out now. Raise him one more time - even though it's getting expensive - without going all-in just yet. See what he does. If he just calls, you may learn that you're ahead, and if the turn card is harmless that would be a good point to get all your money in. If he goes all-in you have a difficult decision to make. Good luck. Personally, I might fold unless I had a read on the player telling me otherwise.

I had been struggling w/ two pair recently as well, and I like this approach a lot. The re-reraise lets you find out right there if he likes his hand enough to push all in before the turn. That is the point I like to bail on two pair. Sometimes they've got two pair themselves and your re-raise looks like a set or better and they end up giving up there themselves. I should also note that I question a call of my re-reraise, that to me usually says he's got a monster and is letting me bet as much as I want into him for the rest of the hand. Thanks for clarifiying this play a little bit more Dale, it helped me understand better what I couldn't quite spell out yet.

Taking it down 2pr 5 times out of 6 is just fine. Put enough money in the pot, so if they call they are getting bad odds and you will make money in the long run. If no one calls, well, realize they don't want to tangle with you anymore, Mr. Big Stack EasyT.
The more I play, the more I realize how risky a slow play is, with almost any hand. Seems too often my flush in the blinds gets called down by the Ax-offsuit looking for his 7 outs. Too often one card in my straight gets paired on the river for someone else's boat. Too often my trips lose to that weird straight completion I wasn't even looking for. Quads? OK! Slowplay!

speaking of top two pair, AT, and QQ.......... i pretty much knew for a fact that i was going to lose this hand as soon as the flop came out. i just didn't count on how fucked up the manner in which i lost would be. in fact, this hand was such bullshit that the converter completely failed to acknowledge UTG+1 as the winner after i fed the hand history into it 3 times! it kept awarding me the pot, so i had to manually edit it.

Party Poker 0.5/1 Hold'em (9 handed)

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with T, A.
1 fold, UTG+1 calls, Hero raises, 5 folds, BB 3-bets, UTG+1 calls, Hero calls.

Flop: (9.50 SB) A, T, 6 (3 players)
BB checks, UTG+1 bets, Hero raises, BB calls, UTG+1 calls.

Turn: (7.75 BB) 8 (3 players)
BB checks, UTG+1 bets, Hero calls, BB calls.

River: (10.75 BB) 4 (3 players)
BB checks, UTG+1 bets, Hero calls, BB calls.

Final Pot: 13.75 BB

Results:
UTG+1 has T 9 (flush, ace high).
Hero has T A (two pair, aces and tens).
BB has Q Q (one pair, queens).
Outcome: UTG+1 wins 13.75 BB.

i only called the river for information, since i wasn't sure whether BB would.

Two pair makes me so much money...

***** Hand History for Game 2033178611 *****
$25 NL Hold'em - Wednesday, May 11, 14:38:07 EDT 2005
Table Table 37023 (Real Money)
Seat 9 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 1: Real_Marulk ( $39.65 )
Seat 2: Radagility22 ( $6.6 )
Seat 3: EvilJason ( $25.32 )
Seat 4: garryp ( $53.4 )
Seat 7: luckyylanny ( $5.05 )
Seat 8: hexecutoremp ( $24.3 )
Seat 9: Cass007 ( $14.73 )
Seat 5: stressball10 ( $24.65 )
Seat 10: verb2 ( $20.5 )
Seat 6: bobes10 ( $11.3 )
verb2 posts small blind [$0.1].
Real_Marulk posts big blind [$0.25].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to stressball10 [ 9s 9c ]
Radagility22 folds.
EvilJason folds.
garryp folds.
stressball10 calls [$0.25].
bobes10 calls [$0.25].
luckyylanny folds.
hexecutoremp folds.
Cass007 folds.
verb2 raises [$0.9].
Real_Marulk folds.
stressball10 calls [$0.75].
bobes10 folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 9d, 2s, Ac ]
verb2 bets [$3].
stressball10 calls [$3].
** Dealing Turn ** [ Js ]
verb2 bets [$3].
stressball10 raises [$7].
verb2 is all-In [$13.5]
stressball10 calls [$9.5].
** Dealing River ** [ Qs ]
stressball10 shows [ 9s, 9c ] three of a kind, nines.
verb2 doesn't show [ As, Jh ] two pairs, aces and jacks.
stressball10 wins $39.45 from the main pot with three of a kind, nines.

same deal last night... live NL game, $0.25/$0.50 blinds. by the end of the night, most people have busted out and the 4 guys left all have big stacks so it plays more like $0.50/$1 NL.

i get 44, raise to $3 to steal the blinds or get fold equity if an A/K flops. 2 callers.

flop is 4J6, two clubs. SB bets $3, BB raises $10. good lord!!

i re-raise to $50. the collective gasp is audible in china.

amazingly, BB calls!! turn is the Kc... fuck!!! we check it down and he only has J6o for 2 pr. i win one of the biggest pots of the night.

2 pair is a brutal hand if you don't know when to let go.

ChezJ

Originally Posted by dalecooper

Two pair makes me so much money...

stressball10 shows [ 9s, 9c ] three of a kind, nines.
verb2 doesn't show [ As, Jh ] two pairs, aces and jacks.
stressball10 wins $39.45 from the main pot with three of a kind, nines.

...when you don't have it!

Agreed.