Doan:

You are being a bit reductive. I didn't say HOW a player should play small pocket pairs in early position in each of these situations; only that you obviously need to be aware of what the table is doing rather than simply applying an inflexible hand chart.

But I would also caution you as to what I said about scenario 1. You may in theory have positive equity against these guys in playing your pocket pairs, but I would think a couple of important variables would nonetheless come into play:

1. Stack sizes. Since we know these guys are going to raise a lot, it means that they are essentially increasing the price of playing small pocket pairs out of position. That doesn't necessarily mean we shouldn't play them, but they need to have large enough chip stacks that on the hands we hit (especially when we hit a set or a straight), we have a shot at a significant payoff.

2. Note that in my hypothetical, I indicated that these guys c-bet so much that it made it very difficult to put them on a useful range postflop. And this is one of the problems with playing small pocket pairs out of position. They are fine when you hit your set or straight, but when you don't, you need to be able to figure out how likely you are to be ahead in the hand, because that's where a lot of that equity comes from (you are ahead of everyone who misses the flop). A spewing, c-betting maniac to your left side makes post-flop play much more difficult. Now, if you are just fantastic with reads, maybe you can overcome that disadvantage and extract the equity out of your small pocket pair, but it's a pretty difficult situation. I know-- I've been in it.

If you are playing a small pocket pair out of position against some very aggressive players, the reality is that you probably aren't going to collect on many of the hands where they miss the flop unless you are willing to absorb some pretty big beats on hands where they hit it. It is, at best, pretty high variance poker. While I am not going to say categorically that you are wrong to play these, tightening up in this situation at least keeps you out of the types of hands where you have no idea whether you are ahead or behind and no way to find out other than to pour a ton of chips into the pot.