Playing your sets in NL Holdem cash games…
Playing your sets in NL Holdem cash games
Successful cash game players all know that exploiting the implied odds to the maximum is where the greatest value lies in these games. Pocket pairs carry excellent implied odds
especially if the table happens to be short handed. Many of these cash players provided theyre acting in the shadow of a large chip-stack completely reduce their strategy to set mining. Set mining is the habitual playing of small pocket pairs
solely with the purpose of hoping to be hit by a set on the flop. In order that you should really understand how set exploitation works
you need to understand the concept of implied odds. Lets consider that you are playing a pair of 6s from the cut off
with several people staying in the hand. At this moment
you are well aware of the fact that your hand is most probably not the best one at the table
but you do see the flop nonetheless hoping that youll land a set. You are also aware that you will miss your set most of the time
and only make it on a few lucky hands. It would seem like youre pouring chips into a negative EV value play. This situation if contemplated from a strictly mathematical perspective is indeed a negative EV one
but you as a skilled player know more about the nature of the game than cold-hard math does. You know that on the few occasions you fill up your set
youll take down huge pots
because your set is going to be next to impossible to read. Youre bound to get a lot of money off people on a top pair
and even more off those who hit two pairs. In the long-run
the money that you win on such hands will not only make up for all the money you spend seeing the flops in vain
itll also hit you with a nice profit. The implied odds turn this apparently negative EV setup into a positive EV one. It is theoretically possible that you will lose on your set
in case one of your opponents gets hit by an even higher set on the flop. The odds of something like that happening though are small enough to make getting all your money in on your flopped set very profitable in the long-run. Upon hitting your trips
your sole goal should be only to get as much money into the pot as possible. You want to felt an opponent or double up at the very least
so be prepared to go for the kill when the opportunity presents itself. Whether or not such set-oriented strategic approach is correct depends on a few key factors. First of all: the size of your stack. You need to be deep stacked to exploit this strategy
which means you need a minimum of 100BBs in your stack
but 200BBs is more like it. You need the large stack because: you will be spending chips on seeing all those unrewarded flops
and your stack needs to be able to take that strain. On the other hand
you need the large stack so that you can milk your sets (when you do hit them) to the max. You will only be able to take as many chips from your opponents as your stack size allows you to. This is the reason why set mining will not be a viable strategic approach in tournaments
where being deep stacked is a luxury you wont really be able to rely on. The exact way you need to play your small pairs is also dependent on a few things. On one hand
you need to put as little money into the pot preflop as possible
because you know you are going to lose the majority of that money
so you want to minimize your losses. On the other hand
in aggressive short handed games
betting or raising preflop on your pairs gives you a much bigger spectrum of possibilities to take the pot down. Whether you mine sets as a part of your cash game strategy or not
you should always play with a rakeback deal backing you up. A rake rebate setup will open up an entirely new revenue stream for your online poker effort.