Do you guys feel that it can be profitable and how much so if you play only pocket pairs and you play them well?

Uh...no

Not really.

I suppose it's possible but if so it barely is. And it's never optimal. Always +EV to play other hands..............................

Why would you wanna play that way, anyway? Boring as hell...

You can Play more profitly

I am just asking because the games in my area have been dead lately. It appears that everyone is just set mining and all the fish have been cleared out.

Playing pocket pairs well will always be profitable, but you miss a lot of value if you always fold everything else.

EDIT: Your last reply reminds me of something venice10 once said. If everyone is set mining, you can't win a big pot with a small pocket pair, since when you get it in it's set over set. You can, however, win a big pot by playing suited and connected hands and cracking sets (or bluffing people off whiffed pocket pairs). Now, if you think this doesn't sound like a good idea, you probably are misjudging how bad your game is.

You can't profit from feelings. You also can't post a questions like this in this forum without getting your thread locked. Read the stickies.

Thank you for that advice!

Just do the math. You're only getting dealt like 25 hands an hour when playing live. And you're only gonna see a pocket pair about once every 17 hands. You're only gonna see Aces once every 221 hands, or about once every nine hours, and even when you get them, you're only gonna win with them 85% of the time. Even when you do win with them, there's no guarantee you won't simply get everyone to fold pre-flop, or on the flop to a single bet, and win only small pots.

For set mining, you're only gonna flop a set like once every 9.5 times you see a pocket pair, which will only happen once every seventeen hands. AKA, you're only gonna flop a set about once every 6.5 hours or so. So in 9 hours, you're gonna play two hands aggressively, since the rest of the time you're just trying to flop sets and folding them when you don't. Maybe you'll play three or four hands aggressively if you're willing to play KK and QQ without set value. And keep in mind that in all of these cases, simply having these cards does not mean you're going to win with them. It also doesn't mean that when you do win, you're going to win big. In fact, if you're only playing four hands a day, the chances are you're not gonna win big, because everyone's gonna notice that guy who only limps one hand an hour is suddenly raising and re-raising pre-flop or on the flop, and unless they've got a hand they're able to crack your hand with, they're probably just gonna get out of your way.

Meanwhile, at a 10-handed live table, if you're playing 1/2 you're gonna lose about $7.50 an hour just from blinds and antes, then figure another 8 bucks every 17 hands from when you call a raise to see a flop with one of your pocket pairs. That's about three times every two hours. So every two hours you can expect to lose about $39 bucks playing this super tight range.

In a 9-hour session that's gonna be $175.50ish, assuming the cards fall exactly as the statistics say they should. Let's not forget the sessions you'll play where you'll play for 12 hours straight and see like three pocket pairs, and not a one of them flop a set. Or the times when you'll go five sessions in a row without seeing any premium pocket pairs.

But assuming you never see any variance, will you make more than $175.50 every 9 hours when you only play 2-4 hands for more than a limp/call and a check/fold on the flop? If you could guarantee that your opponents are all so incredibly stupid that they haven't noticed the way you're playing, then I suppose it's possible, assuming they always have a big second best hand to play against you. But it's unlikely they will. More than likely, you'll flop a set, bet, and they'll fold. Or you'll slow play, and they'll draw out to their flush and take your whole stack. Or they won't draw to their flush, but that third heart will hit on the river, and because you're a coward too scared to play more than 6% of your hands, you're gonna fear they hit and fold your aces or just check/call with your set, and never maximize your wins.

So, the bottom line is, no, probably not. Not live, anyway.

You do realize how easy this is to exploit right.

Iso and barrel relentlessly. If no one is continuing with anything less than a set, you can just back off when you face resistance.

But it's really hard for me to imagine that the game plays like this.

No money live everyone setmines

yes u can play only pps and be profitable
u can also add AQ+ in ep, AJ in mp, AT and BBs/65s+ in lp, which doubles your % of pfr and still is profitable. why play half as many hands when u can still be a nit and play 2x as much? all u hve to do is add some speculative hands to lp as needed to avoid nit image and u are good togo

In the games your describing...pocket pairs are not profitable...well there slightly more profitable then 72 off but if you play them and 72o well there both profitable. Hands are not getting to show down..so set mining makes no sense. and set mining with small pairs would mean, you only get action if its set over set.

As mentioned above just run the table over...buy in with just enough to threaten them...isolate a ton with bigger bets...and take them off on the flop and turn...

It can be profitable, but it would be boring, nitty as all get out, you would sacrifice major value (so much money comes from pots where my TPTK is good over a TPWK.

I think you could make money, but not as much as if you didn't just play PPs, and also you would never really get paid off by anyone who was paying any attention at all.

Do you think this would be to tight ?? to loose ? about right ?

EP: 1010+ AQs+

MP: 22+ A10s+

LP: 10Js+ maybe 56s+ when there are multiple callers and old people in the blinds

from the blinds: QQ+ AQs+ calling with 22-JJ when you have effective stacks of 15x of the o/r

Obviously this will and should change in varying situations/dynamics, but as a defalt for 1/2 ?

Everyone is tight so the obvious solution is not to play even tighter than the others. It is to play more hands, steal pots away that nobody else wants, and then not pay them off when they finally play back at you.

I'd be shocked if I wasn't profitable simply playing sooted 3s (ie A3, 93, J3, etc). Not optimal though. Same for pocket pairs (more optimal, but still suboptimal).

Another problem is that you can't play any pocket-pair. So you have to fold 22-77.
After this Your range is much smaller and you can play less hands

NL Poker is a game of people. You got to get into your opponent head and figure how e generally behaves and then play his tendencies. By the way, this is an art very hard to master but this is the most profitable way to play no limit. When you sit down at the table you got to zero-in on one or two big stacks and do your home work on them. After a while get involve in a hand when one of them enters the pot and as I said play his tendencies.

Now, playing only pocket pair is not profitable. For your information: there are only five hands in poker that can be considered profitable: AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQs. Of course much more hands could be played profitable against people but you got to do what I said. Get to know how they generally play and act upon.

AK

+1

You just have to enlarge your range a little bit. About 3-4 Hands and than you have the Small-Stack-strategy.

Also if you want to play profitable agains unsophisticated players use cash bills or chips to get them behave the way you want:

Chips vs. Cash
Against unsophisticated players bet CASH when you intend to bluff or semi-bluff with a draw and bet CHIPS for your value bets when you want a call. If the pot is let's say $100 and you want them to fold, bet one $100 CASH bill. If you have a draw then you bet cash bills to get the maximum FE. If you have a made hand with a redraw like a set or top two pair or a str8 or a flush then bet chips to get a call. The cash bills looks like real money and is intimidating to most every fish because they associate the cash bills with what they can buy for them in real life. It takes years and years of hard play to be able to disregard the value of money at the poker table and consider the bets as units. So, you can tell if your opponent has experience or not and play his tendencies by using CASH or CHIPS to manipulate him.

AK

Read another thread or post about this somewhere .. In that case the conclusion was that it could be profitable (agreed very boring), but only against a changing opponent pool. This was about a man in Tampa Bay at a casino ... he was wondering why he would only win on weekends.

Well, you generally are playing against regs on weekdays ... therefore, no action when you enter a pot because they know your game. Math says you get a pocket pair every 16 hands and hit a set every 8 pocket pairs. So you get a set every 128 hands on average ... or once every 5 hours. Doesnt seem like much fun unless you can exploit your image somewhere in the middle.

How often you get paid on your sets is unknown ... Do you still play aggressively when you don't hit a set?

This guy in Tampa swore by the 'method' ... but only on weekends. GL