Playing Pocket Pairs in Position

...playing pretty poor poker?

I think I might be overplaying my PPs in a lot of situations.

So here's my hypothetical. Youre on the button. UTG, an unimpressive ABC player raises his standard 3-4x and...

A) Theres a cold caller. You hold 77. Raise or call?
B) No cold caller, folded to you w/ 77 OTB. Raise or call?
C) Repeat A and B when you hold 88-TT
D) Repeat A and B when uou hold 22-66

What I'm trying to get at is what factors influence youre decision to coldcall or raise with mid pocketpairs. In multiway pots it would seem I'm often gotta-hit-to-win, but if its 3 way and I hold 77 I'm often holding 50% equity in a 3 way pot. That would lead me to raise. In a headsup pot, though, where I'm more likely to be 50/50, I tend to raise more in position hoping that if I miss I can use my position to either cbet and take it down or take free cards depending on the board.

I'm pretty 'meh' here. Help?

A. call
B. call
C (a) call, reraise TT if its a pretty aggressive table
C (b) call, reraise TT if he's a pretty loose raiser (at least 15%)
D (a) call always
D (b) call or fold BUT unless he's a tight raiser, u can't just play for a set (e.g. u have to bluff raise the flop or float sometimes)

So youre never reraising 22-99 vs an UTG raiser?

Originally Posted by euphoricism

So youre never reraising 22-99 vs an UTG raiser?

I'm not a big fan of reraising UTG raisers unless they have a raise a lot preflop from all positions

Ok, switch the raiser to MP and youre in btn and repeat above excersize.

basically, the looser/better the raiser is, the more likely you should be to either fold or threebet in position on a random basis with crap cards (including small pairs), but your default play should be to call.

call mostly

Originally Posted by euphoricism

.
A) Theres a cold caller. You hold 77. Raise or call?
B) No cold caller, folded to you w/ 77 OTB. Raise or call?
C) Repeat A and B when you hold 88-TT
D) Repeat A and B when uou hold 22-66

A) I raise
B) I raise
C) I raise
D) I don't usually open-limp so I openraise/call

Am I too aggressive here or too transparent?

Originally Posted by silu_nz

Originally Posted by euphoricism

.
A) Theres a cold caller. You hold 77. Raise or call?
B) No cold caller, folded to you w/ 77 OTB. Raise or call?
C) Repeat A and B when you hold 88-TT
D) Repeat A and B when uou hold 22-66

A) I raise
B) I raise
C) I raise
D) I don't usually open-limp so I openraise/call

Am I too aggressive here or too transparent?

I think you misread OP, he stated that there was an UTG raise by a solid player and it was then folded to you with the aforementioned hands.

But if you were serious that's really bad (reraising a solid player's utg raise with a medium-small pair) generally.

FWIW, I'd call in all of those spots. I'd still likely call if he raised from MP.

Calling is good for me mostly

If utg raiser is loose I'll 3-bet about 50% of the time

If utg is standard/tight I'll 3-bet occasionally as a "mix up" play since typically ppl won't 4-bet unless they have QQ+ so I'll at least get to see most flops + meta game blah blah...

A. call
B. Sometimes re-raise, otherwise call
C & D More inclined to re-raise TT, otherwise doesn't matter much. If I re-raise then I'm not looking to showdown unless I catch a set.

Originally Posted by Genitruc

If utg raiser is loose I'll 3-bet about 50% of the time

If he's retarded, then re-raising pre-flop is throwing away money IMHO unless you think he's not giving you action.

Originally Posted by Fnord

Originally Posted by Genitruc

If utg raiser is loose I'll 3-bet about 50% of the time

If he's retarded, then re-raising pre-flop is throwing away money IMHO unless you think he's not giving you action.

this is only when there's a caller be4 me (we're on the button so there's usually 8-9 BB's of dead money)

maybe you still think it's unecessary but it's pretty +ev since the caller is usually weak and the loose raiser is... well... loose.

edit : OP posited that utg is "unimpressive", not necessarily retarded. I agree that there's no need to bloat pots with mid PP's vs mentally deficient opponents.

i call in almost all of these situations. if UTG raiser is loose, i will 3-bet with 99/TT about 50% and through in a few with lower PP's to mix it up.

Originally Posted by Fnord

C & D More inclined to re-raise TT, otherwise doesn't matter much. If I re-raise then I'm not looking to showdown unless I catch a set.

This was kind of what I was trying to get at. If we figure UTG villains raising top 8%, his range is 88+,ATs+,KTs+,QJs,AJo+ and pokerstove shows us as a 60% favorite against this range. If we can reraise and take the pot a large portion of the time either preflop or postflop, doesnt a reraise make the most sense? And then throw in that we'll hit a set 1:8? Either way we're still never showing down without a set.

But the problem I'm running into is that If we reraise and the flop is AQ3, what do we do? Cbet? That just nailed a huge part of his range. And if the flop is all unders, I cant know if he's got 88+ or not.

But it seems like coldcalling and folding the flop UI is soo weaaakk.

Don't you destroy your own implied odds by re-raising here? Plus he's folding the worst of his range KX/QX/AJ sometimes.

I would guess re-raising mid-pairs is better from the blinds (OOP) since it's harder to extract with a set anyway.

Originally Posted by zenbitz

Don't you destroy your own implied odds by re-raising here?

The folding equity and wider 3-bet range more than makes up for this.