Watching King of the Hill 2, Polk and Hellmuth disagreed on small pocket pair strategy and I thought it was quite interesting.

Heads up, let's say you are in position and you have a small pocket like 33 or 44, there's not much betting pre-flop and you put your opponent on two random cards, where they could have almost anything other than a premium hand.

The flop comes down, say, 2-8-K rainbow and it's checked to you. You think there's a good chance you're ahead with your very weak pair, so do you bet or do you check back?

Hellmuth says he would overbet the pot, to take down the blinds and antes whilst denying his opponent equity.

Polk felt that building the pot was a mistake and it's better to play it more passively while you think you're ahead.

I honestly don't know which option is best. Also, I guess overbetting is okay, but I'm not sure that's necessary -- you might make a smaller c-bet profitably.

Really depends on your overall strategy and the composition of your range and how your opponent responds to bets and multiple barrels.

My default would be to bet if I have a range advantage because I think it would be very difficult to defend my equity by calling trying to show down. If ranges were closer I would probably mostly check and at a disadvantage definitely check.

Given you prefaced this with us being an opener vs a wide/loose range I would bet but I doubt I would overbet.

Polk said that betting that large is a mistake as it would fold out hands you are currently ahead of while hands that are currently beating you would call. Hellmuth said that that was fine with him. He wanted to take down the pot right there knowing it was very unlikely his hand would improve on later streets (he suggested that he would likely fold to any subsequent betting absent turning or rivering a set), whereas his opponent very likely had two overs to his small pair (or possibly a larger mid pair that might fold to his flop bet).

I am sure that somebody can do a fairly straightforward analysis of this situation. I might have time later.

I'd like to know how Hellmuth balances his range if he overbets 44/33 on K82r. And also what his plan is when he gets called.
In short, I think Polk is more likely to be correct about HU strategy than Hellmuth is. But we'll see if he's still around in five years.

I am sure that everybody knows that Hellmuth does not actively consider "ranges" or "balance". If he said it once he must have said it a hundred times in the past two days that he simply looks at his opponent and determines if he is ahead or behind in the hand and plays the hand accordingly.

IIRC after one hand in an early match in which Hellmuth folded to a river bet, Hellmuth asked his opponent what he had. Opponent said 99. Hellmuth said "I knew it! I put you on exactly pocket nines! That's why I folded on the river."

Anyway, I think Polk from the booth said something like "When I play poker, I like to put my opponents on exactly one hand." Other announcer, I think Busquet, just laughed.

What matters is their check-raising range and their check-calling range. What also matters is their turn bluffing range if the flop is checked through.

For a player with weak-tight tendencies, it would make sense to size your bets to deny your opponent some fold equity. If you think that Hellmuth can be described like that, then it might be better for him to make a larger flop bet to discourage a check-raise bluff and avoid getting bluffed out on the turn, while someone like Doug Polk might do better with a different strategies.

I did not know that but that explains a lot of the weird bluffs I have seen him make, but strangely they work.

If you are betting 33 on the K82 board, you are making hands that have maybe 25% equity against you fold and getting called by a pair as are a 10% equity. You would MUCH rather check 33 and try to take the 33 to showdown vs a wide range of hands that includes the 25% equity type hands.

We would much rather BLUFF with 67 on the K82 board, because then we are surely bluffing a hand like JT that is dominating us, but can't call a bet.

Betting a hand like 33 is much more of a psychology thing. "I think I have the best hand here, I deserve to win, I am going to bet"

It seems to me that part of Hellmuth's strategy with those hands is to "force" villain to have it. On later streets he can then make a great read saying that he knows he is beat.

Betting 33 is prob not bad (actually might be best at some depths), but you should bet smaller for sure. Also on K82r there is no value hand that wants to overbet (OK AA I guess can bet bigger).

Even though I think it's reasonable to assume he doesn't actively consider ranges or balance like most good players in 2017, when he was commentating I was surprised to note he was actually advocating a balanced range, even though he might not have been thinking about it in those terms. What I mean is that at regular points he would say "x did x in that earlier hand, so he needs to sometimes do y in the same situation" and so on. I know that sounds a bit thin, but to me his strategy seemed quite balanced.

Anyway, that's just a side issue.

This seems intelligent, but I think it ignores the likelihood your villain will pick up a draw on the turn that they can bet or else just decide to take a stab with air when a scare card arrives. In those situations, with second bottom pair and 2 outs to a set, you'll have to fold, so you lose a fair percentage of pots where you're ahead if you play passive.

Yes, this was something he specifically said actually. His reasoning was that if he gets a call to a large bet then he knows he's beat and fold later without any dilemma.

This is a good point. If you made a strong hand that you could overbet, would you? Probably not, because an overbet indicates you just want to take it down there and then (as Hellmuth states), but if you had a great hand then the board doesn't have any scary run outs. You would want to keep the hand going and get value.

I guess the only way to deal with this is to take the same approach with at least some of your sets or 2 pair on dry flops, but I'm not sure that's optimal strategy for these spots.

Just to be clear, overbetting K82r with any hand is for sure not optimal against good players. 33 is one of those hands, and is a particularly bad hand to overbet with.

It does make your decisions on later streets very easy, but that is not why you make decisions in poker.

It actually depends on your opponent and versus an experienced opponent I'll do a mixture of betting 1/2 pot or checking.

Versus a fit or fold opponent you'll want to be betting. Versus a more aggressive opponent you'll want to check a street or two.

Popular lines I like to take with 44 and 33 on this flop are listed here (lowercase letters represent opponent's action, uppercase letters represent my action, commas divide flop, turn, and river):
x/B/c, x/X, b/C
x/B/c, x/X, b/F
x/B/c, x/X, x/X
x/X, x/B/c, x/X
x/X, b/C, x/X
x/X, b/C, b/C
x/X, b/C, b/F
x/X, x/X, x/B/c