Though both of these are played to add deceptiveness to our game the proper situations are very different and what follows are the differences as I see them.

Pocket pairs 88 to 22 are great to play, I have won a lot of money with them, and seen other lose huge with them by playing them in the wrong situation. The key to pocket pairs is getting in cheap and here is why.

If there is a raise pre-flop, odd are the raise is w/ AA-KJ unsuited – Best Case, you are a 52% favorite to win if playing strong players – like late in a TRNY, You are probably facing 10 10 to AK, worse case AA to JJ. Lets say you call the raise or worse you raised with 3 3 and are called, and hit with what you think is the perfect flop A J 3 and you think "Joy be to the Poker God or Goddess", push all-in to see the other player turn up AA, JJ, or KQ, with at pot this pot odds will say call. You see this in a lot of televised poker tournament – it makes for good TV – does not make for good poker, the player raising huge w/ 22-88 are praying not to be called and steel the blinds, and if called that they are in the race and not drawing against a higher PP ..To make it simple, if its cheep – play the small PP’s –if not muck and muck fast. If you get in cheep and miss your set FOLD to any bet, unless your PP is part of an open end str draw.

Suited connectors 45 to 89 are great and best played against a raise by a strong player, from a late position. In this situation, once again probably up against AA to KJ, if the flop is high – muck on any bet - no problem easy to get away from, even if we hit one pair, and there is an A and or K on the board, it may be slow played giving us a chance to it a set or second pair. If it hits giving us 2 pair, a set, 4 to the flush, or 4 to the strait, we have a great draw or a very deceptive holding. Let say we started w/ 7s 8s and the flop is 7c7h 6s, odd are our competition has high cards, he/she will expect the same from you!!! To make this better, if you slow play, or are bet into and just call, the turn is an A, odds are you are up against Ace’s up and will be taking down a huge pot, could he hold AA – yes – but we need to go back to pre-flop betting and how this player played other hands. If in this situation, you will win far more than you lose – better yet, if you show down and win or lose, you will get more calls when you have AA-JJ and raise or call pre-flop and get more folds when betting w/ A high against a crap flop like 448 or 3 5 7..

I do not recommend playing these all the time – but after winning several pots with premium starting hands and mucking 3 out of 4 hands at the flop or more, you need to add variety to your play to get players to call you!!

Both small PP’s and Suited connectors are played for the same reason (deception), but the situations are very different, play them sparingly, always with an awareness of what you have shown down with, and what the other players have held at the showdown after raising or calling a raise..

Thanks to TechMan Poker for contributing this article!

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