Explanation of Overpair

An overpair is a type of one-pair holding made with a pocket-pair. To qualify as an overpair the pocket pair must be higher in rank than any of the available cards on the board. 

Example (Hold’em) -

Hand: KK
Board: T55

Example of Overpair used in a sentence -> In Hold’em, pocket Aces is guaranteed to either flop an overpair or top set.

How to Use Overpair as Part of Your Poker Strategy 

Overpairs are typically strong hands in Hold’em, but less so in Omaha.

The exact strength of an overpair will depend on the following -

- How high the overpair is in rank (higher is naturally better).
- The board texture (overpairs don’t like extremely co-ordinated boards)

In Hold’em, good overpairs may sometimes be strong enough to play for stacks with (depending on the stack depth). In Omaha this is rarely the case unless the stacks are shallow. One of the most common mistakes that players make when transitioning to Omaha from Hold’em is overvaluing overpairs. In most cases a naked overpair won’t be strong enough to play for 100bb stacks with in Omaha.

See Also 

Pair, Texture, Omaha, Hold’em, Effective stacks

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