Gus Hansen on How to Play Medium and Small Pairs

Playing Small and Medium Pairs Based on Gus Hansen

Now that I reviewed Daniel's advice on these hands, I thought it would be interesting to see how Gus Hansen approaches these hands at a full table. For my analysis I am using play from his book Every Hand Revealed.

Hand 15:
Pocket 7's
In middle position he raises the 100/200/25 blind to 650. The cut-off raises to 2300 and he calls the re-raise. Gus has 28,850 in chips, so he is risking about 7% of his stack. He folds when the flop has three overcards.

Hand 21
Pocket 5's.
He limps and in first position, and gets raised to 800. He calls. Gus now has 58200.
The flop is 10-10-9. Gus check-calls. The turn is an Ace. Gus check-calls. He admits he should have folded.

Hand 33
Pocket 8's.
He raises from the 3rd position and gets no callers. His raise was a little over 3x's the big blind, given the ante.

Hand 42
Pocket 7's.
The button raises to 4000, with blinds at 500/1000/100. Gus is in the small blind with 68000. He re-raises to 12600. His opponent re-raises to 45300. Gus folds.

Hand 45
Pocket 4's.
Gus limps in the third position and only the BB is in on the flop. Gus hits his set and wins after checking the flop and betting the turn.

Hand 49
Pocket 3's.
He limps and folds when he missed on the flop.

Hand 67
Pocket 9's.
A player raises in early position to 3800. The blinds are 600/1200/200. The next player calls. Gus is 2 off the button and says he will either call or re-raise. He doesn't want to call since he doesn't like to hit sets when he "doesn't need to." He re-raises to 13200 and everyone folds.

Conclusion

Not surprising, but Gus is more aggressive than Daniel.

Gus limps with small pairs, but is much more aggressive with middle pairs.

With medium pairs, if he gets re-raised pre-flop, he will call a small percentage of his stack in hopes of hitting a set. If there is a raise in front of him, he will re-raise putting pressure on his opponent to fold rather than hoping to hit a set. This is something that Daniel does not recommend.