Set Mining Is Cool but Don't Overdo It!

As many of you know I'm a forum person rather than a blogger - so I thought I'd republish this response I gave to an OP after way too many people had suggested a call.

Here's the hand:

PokerStars Game #20582590276: Tournament #106193734, $25.00+$2.50 Hold'em No Limit - Level I (10/20) - 2008/09/21 14:05:49 ET

Table '106193734 3' 9-max Seat #2 is the button

Seat 1: Trzepi (3230 in chips)
Seat 2: SefeR_PL (2950 in chips)
Seat 3: pikul (4470 in chips)
Seat 4: ziberka (3500 in chips)
Seat 5: coolfon (3470 in chips)
Seat 7: Hero (3680 in chips)
Seat 8: Viper_x (3200 in chips)
pikul: posts small blind 10
ziberka: posts big blind 20

"hole cards"
Dealt to Hero J J
coolfon: calls 20
Hero : raises 80 to 100
Viper_x: calls 100
Trzepi: calls 100
SefeR_PL: folds
pikul: folds
ziberka: folds
obywatel_g is connected
coolfon: raises 380 to 480
kocur88 is connected
Hero : ??

To everyone that says call and reevaluate flop ... Please, take a moment and think about it. We only have 3608 chips, and villain has less which means effective stacks are 3400, so calling 480 preflop is not the right odds we need to set mine.

You are only going to be flopping a set 1:7.5 times which means the effective stacks has to be MORE than 7.5 times his raise for the implied odds to work out. Also, you might not always win even if you do flop a set as sometimes he might also have AK and fold to your shove making a preflop call really really unprofitable.

My rules of thumb would be to never call more than 10% of your stack to a RERAISE to set mine, and not more than 5% of your stack to a single open raise to strictly set mine.

Reason that it's different amounts is because in a re-raised pot, the raiser's range is a lot narrower and consists mostly of hands that will pay you off when you do flop your set. Whereas if someone opens in MP and you have 3s in the sb, you really don't want be calling unless you are deep enough, because his range is so wide that he'll often miss the flop when you hit and therefore not pay you off.

He'll also push you off the best hand way too often by cbetting the flop when his 67s misses or whatever.

To sum up ... set mining is cool but don't overdo it. Don't just call because you have a purr and want to hit a good flop:)

-- Annette

More blogs from Betfair Poker pro Annette Obrestad:

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