Hello everyone,
I really need help with this part of MTT strategy. Early in the tournament, everyone is deep stacked with close to 100 big blinds and levels are 30min. The table has a mix of really good...so-so...and bad players. What do I do with small pocket pairs in early position. Do I fold them? Raise them? I've heard really good players who argue both sides.

raise like everything else

Thanks for responding user12345...I appreciate it. So you would raise pocket 22's - 66's in this spot? I glanced over the original Harrington book and noticed he folds these hands in early position....but in his latest book he raises them in this situation. Just confused as to which is really the correct way to play them now.

100bb deep raising whole range is std, limping is stupid, folding is unnecessary.

Thanks for the response....very much appreciated.

Folding is really bad in this situation. Against these kinds of players, limping may be best.

If they were all good players....what would you do with small pairs in this spot? And would it matter if they were tight or loose?

Against donks who want to see a flop, limping may be better for encouraging a multiway pot and keeping the money deep. At a tougher tighter table, raising might be better. In a really tough high stakes tournament, this could be a fold in ep.

Thanks a lot Betgo....this helps make sense of it for me.

Against table described, I'd limp/raise 80/20 and expect to get callers, and not be raised. Agajnst better players where most hands are being raised and 3bet, will open fold 22-66 in early position.

Raising or limping pps prints money at the described table, as you likely get a multiway pot, and they will have trouble folding postflop.

With like 30xBB, this is usually an open fold. 100xBB deep, it has to be a tough table to fold. Would play this hand in ep 100xBB deep in the WSOP ME.

I just want to be sure that I know what you guys mean by "open fold." Are you referring to folding the hand when it's my turn to act? Or do you mean open with the hand and then fold it if I'm 3bet?

open fold = fold when it's your turn to act first time

raise pre 100BB deep with small pp. limping anything makes you a target.

This is some live low to mid stakes tournament where everyone is limping early. If it was likely someone would immediately try to iso your limp, you might not get the result you want. However, if a bunch of people limp behind, someone raises and it is likely other limpers will call, that is a good result.

I gather you are afraid people will think you are a donk and target you if you ever open limp. That seems like a good thing if you play well.

You're assuming that less ppl will call if you raise cf limp, but calling ranges are actually quite inelastic live at 100bb.

It's easier to exploit a tough image than a weak one

I disagree with your post

not midstakes theory imo, should be moved to small stakes

I assume that you think this should be moved to "small stakes" because it's not worthy of being in the "mid stakes" forum? Yet how come there's such a wide variety of opinions on how to play these hands? Doesn't appear to be that easy of a question to answer?

It's a good discussion, but imo not for midstakes.
It just lowers the quality of information that readers should be receiving from this section.
Reason you got all of those replies is because it was discussed numerous times.

Let me just disagree with this statement. It certainly is more interesting than the numerous shove or fold spots that get posted and that can be answered with a simple chart.
The topic may have been discussed numerous times, but it seems like it has not been resolved yet...

To add to the discussion, what is the approximate stack depth that you guys consider to be the inflection point? I think there was a good point made that with 100bb, you can raise and expect to get value and with 30bb, it is probably best to fold. Going with the old "set-mine with 20 to 1 odds", raising with the small pps in EP starting with 40-50BB seems reasonable.

To be honest, my expected value with low pairs in early position in cash games is borderline negative. But that may very much be a problem with the player and not with the theory ;-)

As to what stack depth to play small pps in ep, it depends on the table, dynamics, and you still level. They play better at a passive table. You want a lot of multiway pots. Obviously, if you can steal or take it with a cbet, that is also good for you.

As for cash games, small pps in ep are hugely profitable in US live cash games at least to 2-5, where there will be lots of multiway pots. In tighter and tougher online games, they don't play as well.

Call me a noob but I am almost always just folding small PP's in EP early in a tournament. I feel the amount of times we get re raised or have to play a weak hand OOP hating every flop that we miss negates the advantage of sometimes luck boxing our set and also getting paid which will be very rare. I stick to just playing very tight early stages only playing low PP's if there are good odds to set mine and there is a low chance of being re raised.

I'm willing to change my mind if someone can give a good reason to play low PP's in EP with a raise. What exactly is our plan during the hand? Hope to get multiple callers and flop a set? What do we do when we miss the flop or get re raised which will be the majority of the time. I am just of the pretty strong opinion they should be folded.

Like betgo pointed out, the perfect table for this is loose passive players. You want a lot of players in the pot, but not many 3-bet-happy players.
Sure you will miss like 90% of flops, but the times where you hit, you are likely enough to get a lot of chips in from worse. When you miss, there's usually not much you can do, unless you can steal a pot or two from time to time I guess.
But like I said before, this is me playing devil's advocate, because so far, I have not been able to get a profit from these hands (though I'm not playing at tables that are optimal for this, typically not live tables).

Early in a tournament with higher spr is exactly when you want to be playing them. Tbh you probably just have selective memory. If your deep enough you can call a 3b with ease anyways; however unless there are really unaware players an ep raise should not be 3b that often especially if you have tight stats. You can always limp call as a counter measure anyways and encourage multiway pots or throw in the odd limp rr or raise,4b bluff.