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Pocket Pairs as a Starting Hand in Texas Hold'em

These starting hands break down into three subcategories depending on their rank. The most important thing you need to know about pocket pairs is that high ones have a good chance of winning without improvement, while low ones have almost no chance of winning without improvement.

AA and KK. You should build the pot with AA and KK every chance you get. Even if everyone in a six-player game stays in, you are in good shape with these hands: AA will end up making the winning hand about 50 percent of the time and KK about 43 percent. You would not be heartbroken to see opponents fold, especially with KK, because that would reduce the chance of your pair getting beaten. But these pairs make a lot of money even in a family pot.

QQ, JJ, and TT. Thinning the field becomes more important with these lower pairs. For example, in a six-player showdown contest, TT still wins a respectable 30 percent of the time. But if you can get it down to you and two opponents, the winning percentage of TT skyrockets to close to 60 percent, doubling your chance of winning while reducing your pot odds by less than half (after you count the bets left behind by folding players). If a raise won't eliminate opponents, don't do it, because a small pot will make it easier for you to force out opponents later if you want to. If there is raising by more than one player before the flop and you have to call more than two bets cold, don't rule out letting go of JJ and lower pairs, especially if you will be up against more than one opponent; you are a big underdog to win against a single opponent with a higher pocket pair or against multiple opponents with different overcards.

99 and Lower: Lower pocket pairs are even trickier. A lot of beginners lose money with middle and low pocket pairs because they fail to understand how utterly weak these hands are if the board doesn't help them.

- Stealing is a valid and aggressive approach to use with medium pocket pairs, such as 99 and 88. Statistically, any pocket pair is a slight favorite to win against a single opponent with two overcards.

- However, in practice, you reach a cut-off point around 77 or so where your pair is so weak that limping is a better approach. When you play a low pocket pair, you are essentially on a long shot draw to trips (the odds of flopping a set are about 1:9) and are betting on your good implied pot if you hit. If you don't make a three of a kind with low pocket pair, you will rarely win. A separate pair on the board does not help you, by the way.

- There is absolutely nothing wrong with folding a low pocket pair before the flop if you have to call a raise and the hand will be multi-way.

Following are the percentage chances of various pocket pairs being the top possible pair after the flop, meaning that no card on the flop is higher than your pair. You can see why forcing out player when you have pairs like JJ and TT is so important and why low pocket pairs are such long shots.

Strength of Pocket Pairs After the Flop Hand Chance of being top possible pair after the flop (%) AA 100% KK 77% QQ 59% JJ 43% TT 31% 66 4% 22 0%