I regularly play 2/4 limit. The casino I play at does fairly regular high hand prices. You need at least boat to qualify for the high hand. Sometimes the prize is as little as $100 every hour. I am going to be playing soon where the prize is $200 every 15 min.

I understand a lot of people play extra loose and don't like to raise when there is a nice high hand prize.

What I am wondering is pre-flop how much should these prizes effect my gameplay when I have something like 2/2 or 5/5 in the hole? Loose play, in general, makes pocket pairs more valuable since hitting a third results in a large pot than it might otherwise. Also if I am going for a boat or four of a kind it is hard to get that prize without pockets pair.

So my question is: going into a night where there is $200 being given out every 15 min how should I play a pocket pair?

Thanks for your thoughts

Riverbender

The people you're playing with who adjust their strategy are almost invariably over-adjusting, and they are suckers. Don't adjust your play, imho.

The only way you should really adjust is by factoring them in to calling decisions, and even then, that's mostly an NL concept (ex: you have AA on AsKs4d-Ts and a guy donk jams into you, where the end of the time for the round is near, the HH is 200, and any of your 10 outs will win the HH promotion for you, so now your 200 call to win 500 becomes 200 to win 700 and you should now call). Adjusting in limit is pretty silly, and the hands you'd want to adjust with (like seeing more flops w/ 33) will likely cost you a bunch of money, as they'll not win the pot often enough for the situations in which you'd be tempted to play them, and won't make the HH very often at all (3s full is highly unlikely to hold up as the best hand, if 15 hands are dealt to 200+ players over the course of the HH time).

I would suggest adjusting your play to take advantage of the other players who are playing for high hands. Many players will try to limp in with all sorts of suited trash (42s, 63s) - you need to raise more preflop and punish them for playing such garbage. If they are going to play bad poker in hopes of hitting a high hand, it doesn't mean you have to. You do need to be prepared for players complaining about you raising - too bad for them.

The odds of hitting a high hand are pretty slim. They do add some value to each hand you play, but really not very much. So play small pocket pairs just like would normally - fold in EP, call in LP if lots of players are already in the pot.

When there is a paired flop, like QQ3, and it checks around, be careful of someone slow playing trying to his their quads.

I think in typical 2/4 up to 4/8 games, you won't have to do much justifying to see flops with all/most of your pairs. The games should be playing loose and passive enough that you can open limp hands like 22 under the gun 100% of the time, but it's really up to you to determine if the game conditions qualify. You are definitely not adjusting correctly if you are open-folding small pairs UTG in a good, loose game.

I just want to say that I must've seen hundreds of thousands lost by players trying to hit high hands/jackpots and w/e else type promo is running. I never play to hit them and am glad others are willing to dump money bec of the stupid things. Every now and then I hit one but not bec I'm trying to.

Yeah, if you're adjusting trying to hit HHs and not to how they affect the game conditions, you are doing it wrong.

+1

The hands most likely to win a HHJ are also the hands that have the most pot equity.

You could do something like...If you have AA and the flop is K K x rainbow (possible 4 outs to HH), consider checking the flop against 1-3 opponents. This might not be that bad of an idea even without the high hand, so I consider the high hand to be a tiebreaker.

I do the opposite. For example, if I had AK and the flop is KKx, I'll bet. I usually get a bunch of people calling me because they think I CAN'T have any K's in my hand. They think - why would someone bet and risk not seeing all the cards to try for a high hand? I've been able to bet flop/turn/river and get called down in hands like this. Then my opponents get mad at me because I'm not playing for the high hand. LOL.

Obviously it depends on the HH payout, but I can't imagine the amount paid for a full house would justify checking here. Just correctly bet your hand for value in this situation.

I like your style

I don't think they are thinking much really. I find that people at small stakes will call with a very wide range on the flop, so I never worry much about betting someone out of the pot when I have HH potential.