Hi guys,

I've often seen this statement from a lot of pros (even Doyle Brunson wrote it in his book) "I'd almost always take a turn with any pocket pair, and try to break someone".
I really don't understand the point, why would you call/bet on the flop with such a small EV.

So let's see what math says:

Your hand: 77
Flop: anything but not 7, (no straight draw for you to make it simple) and a big card on the flop (8...A)

Why would you ever call any bet, let s say on average 50% of the current pot hoping to hit a 7 ?
Yeah if you hit you probably double up your stack or whatever, win a big pot.
But the chances to hit are 2 / 47 = 4.25%, so you will actually do that 4 times out of 100 situations, in long term you are -profit, again even if we consider the best case when you double up always in the 4 out of 100 cases when you hit, by simply pay the price of another 50% of the current pot in average.

Hoping for some explanations here. Am i missing sth?

You're missing that a pair can sometimes win by itself, and you can sometimes turn it into a profitable bluff on later streets. It's not just about hitting a set, of course.

Also I do not understand why you would discount straight draws?

Flopping a set/fuller/quads with a pocket pair is about 11.8% or so, but flopping a 'good' gutshot or a 'good' open-ender is about another 2% or so I think, so a mid pocket pair, (55+) flops something good around 13.8% of the time.

By 'good' gutshot, I do not mean 66 flopping T,9,8 and by 'good' open-ender I do not mean 77 flopping T,9,8. These straight draws should not be continued with and so these aren't part of the extra bonus 2%.

I know that you have about 12% chances to hit the flop, but my question was about the turn, and ok let s make it 14% (+ straight).

Again, suppose you hold a pocket 77 let s say, and you called a small raise pre-flop let s say 3BB, so the pot now is about 6.5BB;

If you miss the flop and your opponent bets a small bet somewhere between 40 and 50% of the pot so another 3BB, why would you ever call it? if there is no 7 on the flop, cause the chance to hit on the turn is 4.25% (2 / 47).

Also it's extremly unlikely that the flop will be exactly 4 5 6 so you can hope for a straight with your pocket 77, and the flush draw with one card is suicidal for the small pocket pairs (22-88) because if you make such a flush with one small card, is very likely that someone else will have a bigger flush. so it;s in your own interest not to make a flush when you hold a hand like this.

The flop doesn't need to come 4,5,6 for 77. If the flop comes 5,6,8 and 6,8,9 these flops are just as good. It is only 8,9,T that is bad. Ditto with the gutterball flops, most of them are good and allow you to call a flop cbet with 6 outs to a strong hand.

As for whether calling a small flop cbet makes sense, most of the time it does, (depending on board texture), as now you just see the new 'flop' as the turn, since the other player made it so cheap for you to see 4 cards and your range hasn't really been narrowed much.

I completely ignore flush draws for medium pocket pairs, it isn't worth anything and there are plently of reverse implied odds with it.

It depends a lot on the range we are up against as well. There are definitely spots where we fold vs a small bet, because villain’s range is too strong. Call too many underpairs on the flop and villain starts barreling the turn more against our now weakened range, which further decreases the ev of our flop call.

On the other hand, if villain’s range was weak relative to ours, we might even be able to float these hands all the time. Yes we go to the turn with a weaker range, but villain is unable to punish that because his own range is weak as well.