No natural principle is currently known to be strictly between the arithmetic comprehension axiom (ACA0) and Ramsey's theorem for pairs (RT 2 2) in reverse mathematics. The tree theorem for pairs (TT 2 2) is however a good candidate. The tree theorem states that for every finite coloring over tuples of comparable nodes in the full binary tree, there is a monochromatic subtree isomorphic to the full tree. The principle TT 2 2 is known to lie between ACA0 and RT 2 2 over RCA0, but its exact strength remains open. In this paper, we prove that RT 2 2 together with weak König's lemma (WKL0) does not imply TT 2 2 , thereby answering a question of Montálban. This separation is a case in point of the method of Lerman, Solomon and Towsner for designing a computability-theoretic property which discriminates between two statements in reverse mathematics. We therefore put the emphasis on the different steps leading to this separation in order to serve as a tutorial for separating principles in reverse mathematics.