Don’t Need to Flip with Small Pairs when You Have Chips
In SNG’s, when on or near the bubble with chips, I rarely like taking flips with small pairs unless I’m the short stack. When you have a poker chip advantage, doubling someone up is the last thing you want to do. But when I’ve been tirelessly aggressive playing shove/fold poker, it can be hard to make the adjustment with a made hand like 4s. I got into some trouble in the small blind on the bubble of a SNG when I had the lead. Blinds had gone up to 50-100 and I had about 3000 chips. The button folded and without consideration I shoved on the BB with 44. He had about 1200. Though he might fold a lot of hands, now that the blinds are up, he might be feeling threatened, opening up his calling range a bit. He made a no-brainer call with A5 and I doubled him up while losing over 1/3 of my chips. Under no circumstances am I open-folding a pair in this spot, but I could have tried to limp-smash or limp-fold. If I limp and he checks, I can fold if I miss and lose a small pot to him, and if I hit my set I can confidently proceed. But if I open-shove, practically any time he calls me I’m beat or flipping for a big portion of my stack. At some point with the big stack, it’s better to be bluff-shoving with random poker hands like k-7 than 2s, 3s, 4s, or 5s.
