Two different approaches to playing sets

Poker Strategy / Matthew Pitt / 02 February 2011 / Leave a Comment

Following on from the excellently written article by Marcus Bateman on "Raising With Sets" I thought I would use a couple of hand examples from my own database to show the different approaches you can take in order to get your money into the middle when holding a set.

For the purpose of this article we are not going to look at the preflop play as much as the actual flopping of the set. Also, some people refer to all three-of-a-kind holdings as a set but we are only going to consider a set as holding a pair that hits another one of its cards on the flop, the other is trips and a completely different animal.

Whenever you flop a set the first thought in your mind should be how we are going to get our and our opponent's stacks into the middle of the felt but this planning stage is where many players go wrong and often back themselves into a corner, allow their opponent to outdraw them or finish up winning a much smaller pot than they should. Once you have flopped a set who you get your money in depends on factors such as the preflop action, your opponent type, stack sizes and the ever-so vital board texture.

The following two examples from my own cash game database show different ways to play sets depending on the factors mentioned in the previous paragraph. In the first we are six handed $0.25/$0.50 and I make my standard raise to $1.75 from under the gun holding 3s3h and only the big blind calls. Villain is running at 65/18/3.3 from a small sample size but I've already pegged him as a donkey. The flop comes down 3c-9d-4h and villain bets $2.81 into the $3.75 pot. Here many people would simply raise and hope villain either calls or comes over the top of us. The problem with this is that he only called preflop, which does not indicate great strength and he has donk-bet into me despite the fact I am going to continuation bet here with my entire range.

At this point I am thinking he has nothing and hopes me to fold AK or AQ or has a weak hand such as 98 or T9 something like that. If I raise here I am saying I have a hand that beats his most likely holding and unless he is nuts he's going to fold. By calling, which I did, we allow him the chance to make an expensive second best hand. The turn is the Jc and he now checks and I opt to bet $6.80 into the $9.37 pot because it looks like I am stabbing at the pot and I also think the jack helps his range a lot. It looks like it has when he makes a min-raise taking the pot to almost $30 and leaving himself $21 and change behind so I shove on him and he snap-calls with Jh9s and has less than 10% equity.

In the second hand we are four-handed and I make my standard opening raise to $1.75 from UTG holding 8s8d. The action folds to the small blind, who is playing 33/25/0.7 with a 3-bet percentage of 20%, who makes it $6 to play. I make a marginal call and I am rewarded as the flop comes down 8h-5h-Tc and villain checks. Here we have two options, we can lead out and try to protect out hand against the plethora of draws out there or we can check with the intention of raising our opponent's bet. The last option is by far the worst because out opponent is passive post flop so is likely to check behind with hands that he would likely call a bet with, such as flush draws, and there are a number of cards that have the potential to kill our action if they arrive on the turn and they do not help him Plus he has three-bet out of position so is likely to have a stronger hand than usual and could be going for the check-raise. So I lead out with a bet of $10 into $12.50, probably a little on the large side to be honest but I am protecting against the flush and he calls. The 5d hits the turn and again he checks. Now the pot is $32.50 and I have $36.05 left so the only move left is to shove. Not only do we now have a full house, if he liked the flop then he likes the turn and the only two holdings we're bothered about are 55 and TT and if he has those than we are paying him off. I shove and he insta-calls with a rather shocking 7h7d.

Both hands resulted in our stacks going in but both needed different approaches due to the villain involved and the board texture. Think about these two major factors each time you flop a set, think about what range of hands they could hold and how would you a.) play that range yourself and b.) how would you react to aggression and shows of strength if you held villains range.

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