Poker Articles

WillisNYC is an instructor for pokermentors.com.

This is such a basic concept of ring poker.  Yet it constantly amazes me at how few people know and apply the concept of ‘set mining’.   The concept is based on the odds of a person, who holds a pocket pair, flopping a set.   Those odds are 12.5%.   That percentage converts to one time in eight, a person holding a pocket pair will flop a set.  A set is a very powerful ‘made’ hand.  It is almost always ahead on the flop and is likely to be the winner on the river unimproved.   You can also ‘catch up’ to flopped or made straights and flushes by pairing the board.  A set is a hand most people who play ring NL are quite willing to put all their chips in the pot upon the flop. 

Ok, so I think everyone realizes the power of the set, when one flops it.  However, everyone does not play their pocket pairs often enough to take advantage of the power of the set.  So often I see the wrong advice given to people.  "When facing a raise that indicates a strong pair like aces or kings, throw away your small pocket pairs.," or some variation of that advice.  That advice is HORRIBLY WRONG!  The advice should be as follows:   "Whenever you hold a small pocket pair, seek to call before the flop as long as you can get 8-1 implied odds."  Very simply, look at your opponents stack and ask yourself, "Does he have at least 8 times the amount of the raise in his stack?"  If the answer is yes, look at your own stack.  Is your stack at least 8 times the size of the amount of the call?  If the answer to both questions is yes, then CALL and hope to hit your set!

You especially want to be calling when the 8-1 rule is met and you suspect your opponent has a high pocket pair.   This is because many opponents are quite likely to push their unimproved AA or KK very hard and many are willing to get all their chips in with this type of hand postflop.   This is a situation where hitting your small pocket pair likely means that you can capture your opponents entire stack.    Potentially you have a very profitable situation there.  So do not be afraid of his overly large raise that indicates he has a big pocket pair.  Instead, rub your palms with glee because you have a great opportunity!

As an example, you have a good read on an opponent who you know only raises in early position with aces, kings, queens and AK.  You are playing a ½ NL game and you each have 200 chips.  He raises to 10 preflop.  Each of you have 19 times this amount of chips remaining, it is an EASY call.  Even if he raises to 20, you still have 9 times as many chips, another time you should not hesitate to call.   If you hit your set, it is quite likely that you will earn your opponents entire stack in this situation.  

An argument can be made that 8-1 is not a large enough implied odds guide to this situation because you will not always capture someones entire stack.  Sometimes you will be a victim of an overset or another hand that beats you by the river.  Sometimes your opponent will fold to your raise.  However 8-1 is just a good ‘rule of thumb’.  You actually only need 7-1 to cover your investment in the pot preflop to justify the odds of hitting your set.  Most preflop raises in NL ring games are well within the guidelines of 7 or 8 to one.   Especially if both of you are at or near maximum buy in.  So in most situations your implied odds are greater by far than the 8-1 guideline that I suggest.  Thus, most of the time, you will recover your investment in these opportunities at better than the 8-1 guideline that I suggest and you should be calling with all your pocket pairs, even the lowly 22.

This set mining concept is so powerful that you should be playing your pocket pairs over 90% of the time.  So, if you have poker tracker or similar software, look in your database and see how often you are playing all your pocket pairs.  If all of them are not seeing the flop at least 90% of the time, you are missing MANY opportunities for profit.  So check out how you are doing when it comes to set mining and if you are missing opportunities, then stop missing out and start cashing in!