What Do You Do With Pocket Eights on This Flop?
DECISION POINT: Preflop in a $1/$2 no-limit hold'em cash game, it folds around to the hijack who raises. It folds to you in the small blind where you've been dealt 8♥8♣ and you reraise, and the hijack calls. The flop comes Q♥6♥A♥. Action is on you...
PRO ANSWER: In this live $1/$2 cash game, the player in the hijack seat raises to the table standard of $12 or 6 big blinds. This opponent had $112 (56 BBs) to begin the hand. Given the raise comes from the hijack seat, we can put this player on a relatively wide hand range, including many high card hands, all pairs, and some suited connector-type hands.
If we call preflop and play our 8♥8♣ for set value alone, we will not win enough chips postflop on average to make up for our preflop investment. If we call and play our pocket eights as a one-pair hand, we will often be faced with difficult postflop decisions on future streets. Playing a medium pair out of position postflop will generally cause us to win a small pot or lose a big pot. Reraising preflop is the best play.
Once on the flop, there is only one pot-sized bet left in the effective stack since our opponent has $76 behind and there is $74 in the pot. Moving all in is the best play, since we can sometimes get our opponent to fold better hands than ours such as 9x9x or 10x10x with no heart. In order for us to have very little equity, our opponent would need to have both a bigger pair and a bigger heart. More often, our opponent has neither or only one.
Putting our opponent all in on the this flop is the best play.
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