Raising with sets

No Limit Holdem / Marcus Bateman / 01 February 2011 / Leave a Comment

Sets are powerful hands - on most boards against most players and in most spots they are trivially easy hands to try and get all in with, but this does not mean that they are invincible.

Pretty much every player who has played No Limit Hold'em will have known the feeling of flopping a set with a small pair and wanting to sit back and set a trap with their now monster hand. Sets don't come around too often in Hold'em, and the feeling of sitting on such a well concealed and dangerous hand can lead many a player to think of subterfuge above all else, but there are often more pressing considerations in play.

Sets are powerful hands - on most boards against most players and in most spots they are trivially easy hands to try and get all in with, but this does not mean that they are invincible. They are a hand that is surprisingly easy to draw out on if played too passively in multi-way or even heads up pots, and unlike other hands that are easy to draw out on, such as a small two pair, they are much harder to fold later on due to their relative and absolute strength.

Because of this, sets are generally hands to attack with when you hit them. You don't flop them often, so it is critical that you try and build big pots with them as soon as possible. You need to be charging drawing players to hit their hands, and want to try and get as many streets of value out of players with weaker hands, and the simplest way to achieve this is through betting and raising.

Deception obviously has it's place in poker, but it is generally an over used concept by weaker opponents. Aggression - above all aggression with big hands - is what unites the style of basically all the best players. It forces mistakes from people, ends up adding it's own level of deception (after all, you can't always have a hand can you?), and allows you to build big pots easily and quickly.

The key goal with big hands in poker is to win big pots, and the simplest way to do this is to bet. Nowhere is this more true than with sets, where their strength can be flushed away (often quite literally) in an instant, and it is crucial that you both protect your hand as well as get the pot inflating as soon as possible. Weak players struggle with many aspects of poker, but the one they face the hardest time with is aggression, and attacking should nearly always be your first priority any time you hit a hand.

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