The trouble with 'Trouble Pairs'
The money in poker is won or lost over the hands that present the hardest choices. Anyone can bet the nuts or fold with six high, and the hands that are crucial to mastering are the marginal ones.
In all forms of poker you have certain groupings of hands that fundamentally separate good players from bad. One of the most obvious and fundamental of these is the trouble pairs in Hold'em. By 'trouble pairs', we are usually referring to the pairs ranging from around eights to jacks, hands which although powerful for the most part, have key chinks in their armour.
To see why these hands are so complex, simply imagine the two groups of hands either side of them and think about how an average hand of Hold'em plays out. With the very small pairs, your life is pretty simple - if you fail to hit a set, you can usually let go of the hand without much trouble (playing small pairs to the river in big bet Hold'em without sets or specific reads is one of the fastest ways to go broke known to man).
With big pairs, your life is a little more difficult, but still relatively easy. You tend to see flops all involving under cards, and on all but the trickiest boards and against the hardest opponents, your life is relatively simple.
However, with the trouble pairs, you frequently face very hard choices against all forms of opponent on most boards. You will often have one over card to your hand and face action even in the best case scenarios, and if you habitually give these hands up to any action on marginal boards you will lose a huge amount of value. Conversely, if you always give action, you will become a huge mark in these spots, and the key skills of pot control, board reading, and close player observation are crucial to playing these hands well.
The money in poker is won or lost over the hands that present the hardest choices. Anyone can bet the nuts or fold with six high, and the hands that are crucial to mastering are the marginal ones. Try and study how you play your trouble pairs and your win rates on them - you may very well discover an array of leaks with these hands that you never even realised you had.
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