As we work our way through the minimum starting hands one should play in limit Hold 'em, I thought now would be a good time to address pocket pairs (2-2 to A-A), those two lovely cards that are known only to you; cards that can make you a lot of $$$ - or lose you a lot of $$$ - depending upon how (and when) they're played.
Generally, there are no great secrets for extracting a maximum profit from your pocket pair because they're pretty much a straight-forward proposition. That's because a Pair of anything is the lowest "made" hand in poker, thus even a pair of Aces is beat by 2s over 3s, Trip 4s, any Straight, etc., etc. So, for the most part, the only way you'll win with a pocket pair is to either have a "big" Pair that holds up, or you improve on it at or after the flop. Big pocket pairs (J-J and higher) will often be enough to win a pot, particularly if you're playing against 3 or fewer opponents, but they constitute only 4/13ths of all the possible pairs that you'll get. Pocket Aces, Kings, Queens and Jacks may put rice in your bowl, but winning with the other 9/13ths is what keeps that rice in there. Before I get into my strategy chart for pocket pairs, let's cover a few basic terminology and mathematical facts about them.
(Source: GameMaster)
