NLHE20 - Set Mining - Valid Tactics?

MereNovice

Personally, I view "set mining" as a valid tactic on a LAG table where players are likely to overbet their hands after the flop.

I consider the following issues when doing it:

1. How "loose aggressive" are the other players in the hand? It's rarely worth set mining against tight players since you may not get paid sufficiently even if you hit your hand.

2. Stack sizes: you are likely to flop your set 2 in every 15 hands so you need to make sure that your opponent(s) has enough of a stack to make it worthwhile. This means that if they don't have at least 8 times the amount that you have to call pre-flop that you should generally either fold or put them all-in pre-flop. Generally you will need to flop your set because your opponent is likely to bet the flop aggressively and you will, more than likely, fold if you haven't hit.

3. If you are ahead pre-flop (i.e. your opponent has raised pre-flop with a "big ace" or two other over-cards) what are the chances that your opponent will just check it down?
 
4. How big is my pair? I'll "set mine" with pairs up to 99, generally, although this is very dependent on my opponent(s). If I have a bigger pair than that, I generally want to play it strongly pre-flop (or occasionally trap).


Here are a couple of hands from games that I played this morning to illustrate some of the benefits/problems of set mining.

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
Sugar_Puff	Small blind		£0.10	£0.10	£21.34
MereNovice	Big blind		£0.20	£0.30	£21.35
	Your hole cards	8 8
*Optimist*	Raise		£0.60	£0.90	£43.26
ghf	Fold
*Grateful*	Call		£0.60	£1.50	£39.87
Sugar_Puff	Fold
MereNovice	Call		£0.40	£1.90	£20.95
Flop
		9 Q 8
MereNovice	Check
*Optimist*	Check
*Grateful*	Bet		£1.90	£3.80	£37.97
MereNovice	Raise		£4.75	£8.55	£16.20
*Optimist*	All-in		£43.26	£51.81	£0.00
*Grateful*	All-in		£37.97	£89.78	£0.00
MereNovice	Fold
*Optimist*	Unmatched bet		£3.39	£86.39	£3.39
*Optimist*	Show	A Q
*Grateful*	Show	J 10
Turn
		7
River
		2
biggun5	Win	Straight to the Queen	£84.59		£84.59

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
*Overbetter*	Small blind		£0.10	£0.10	£25.12
RKB	Big blind		£0.20	£0.30	£7.80
	Your hole cards	4 4
alexmck13	Raise		£0.40	£0.70	£16.13
wagga	Call		£0.40	£1.10	£15.01
MereNovice	Call		£0.40	£1.50	£18.94
Ieatchips	Fold
*Overbetter*	Raise		£1.40	£2.90	£23.72
RKB	Fold
alexmck13	Call		£1.10	£4.00	£15.03
wagga	Fold
MereNovice	Call		£1.10	£5.10	£17.84
Flop
		3 4 J
*Overbetter*	All-in		£23.72	£28.82	£0.00
alexmck13	Fold
MereNovice	All-in		£17.84	£46.66	£0.00
*Overbetter*	Unmatched bet		£5.88	£40.78	£5.88
*Overbetter*	Show	A A
MereNovice	Show	4 4
Turn
		A
River
		4
MereNovice	Win	Four 4s	£38.98		£38.98

yb

With your stack I make the call in the first hand. If you put one of your opponents on the straight you're getting the odds to try to make the FH. You're only in really bad shape against an over-set, but most players at NL20 over-value their hands so I wouldn't be surprised to be in front a large % of the time here.

MereNovice

In Response to Re: NLHE20 - Set Mining - Valid Tactics?:

With your stack I make the call in the first hand. If you put one of your opponents on the straight you're getting the odds to try to make the FH. You're only in really bad shape against an over-set, but most players at NL20 over-value their hands so I wouldn't be surprised to be in front a large % of the time here.
Posted by yb

I'd seen *Optimist* check-raise with JJ on a QhJh3s flop earlier.
I was pretty sure that I was miles behind after seeing the flop action.
With the actual hands I'm about 30% but that would be a very optimistic read after that amount of action, I think.
I'd take it on against one player (although obviously that would be for a smaller pot) but I thought (wrongly) that I had to be drawing to a one-outer in this case.

A bad fold, I guess.

Dudeskin8

That second hand must have been pretty exciting lol.

But on set-mining I definitly check how much I stand to win before calling raises, if its a really tight player who only raises with AA/KK/QQ there is massive value if you hit as he most likely won't beleive you hav a set.

hurst05

2nd hand is sickening

beaneh

In Response to NLHE20 - Set Mining - Valid Tactics?:

Personally, I view "set mining" as a valid tactic on a LAG table where players are likely to overbet 

their hands after the flop.

I consider the following issues when doing it:

1. How "loose aggressive" are the other players in the hand? It's rarely worth set mining against tight players since you may not get paid sufficiently even if you hit your hand.

2. Stack sizes: you are likely to flop your set 2 in every 15 hands so you need to make sure that your opponent(s) has enough of a stack to make it worthwhile. This means that if they don't have at least 8 times the amount that you have to call pre-flop that you should generally either fold or put them all-in pre-flop. Generally you will need to flop your set because your opponent is likely to bet the flop aggressively and you will, more than likely, fold if you haven't hit.

There is a trade off here between wanting to be at a table where people are willing to overvalue hands post flop and with calling against a person whose raising range is very tight. The stronger someones range of hands they raise with the better your implied odds are to call and try and flop a set, When you do you hope that you will be able to get them to put all of their money in. When someone has a very wide and weak range for raising preflop then your set mining strategy has less implied odds because you will find that so often they dont have much of a hand with which to pay you off.

Good situations to set mine are in limped pots or multiway single raise pots, when you get to calling a raise heads up then you really need for them to have a good hand otherwise even when you hit your set you will be losing money in the long run because you dont get paid enough the few times that you do spike because of the sheer volume of times that you put money in the pot and then check fold.

Because of the above I would advise you to change the implied odds number that you gave above from 8 (which is very liberal) more towards ~15. This way you aren't going to be short changing yourself without really noticing. One of the biggest leaks people make is to set mine when their opponents do not have a tight enough range.

eg

a player aware of position raises on the button, you cannot call from the blinds to set mine. You must either call because you believe they have a wide range and you think you can either win the pot without showdown or get to showdown cheaply enough when your hand is the best. Folding 22-66 may feel dirty but the reality of it is that it's very hard to hit your set on the flop (8.5:1 on the flop and 5:1 for the whole board). Against someone who is raising their button wide it is often times going to be more profitable to 3 bet your pair and continuation bet boards that hit your '3 betting range'. Note that even though you have pocket twos, if you 3 bet the button and he calls and the flop is AJ3r and you bet half pot, you will get an inordinate amount of folds, infact they'll fold unless they have hit the board themselves. So if they continue with AA/JJ/33/ATs+ (about 3.5% of preflop hands in the world of holdem) then you can see they wont be continuing very often at all. If they are also folding all pairs that arent sets then you are folding out multiple hands against which we are in terrible shape, which is obviously a good thing.

The 88 hand.

Great spot to set mine, an early position opener, whilst both the opener and flat caller have you covered. When the flop comes down and the original raiser checks this is quite weird, the flat caller leads and you c/r him, the problem here is that he has a flat calling range (ie hands he wants to see a flop with) so pairs, suited connectors, suited acces are all possible. When he bets though you have to narrow that down to something that hit the board considering we are multi way, so if he can have JT, 99,QQ, TT/JJ, and lots of pair and straight draw hands like T9, QJ etc it probably isn't best to c/r him, but w/e ....

Once you check raise and the original raise conitnues regardless (either he has a blooming monster or he just doesn't care!) so for him to do that he can have 99/QQ/KK/AA/JT. Considering he is putting 200 big blinds in relatively because of the stack sizes between the other two players I would be pretty scared. 

Having said that I have a set, there is £90 in the pot but only 48 that we can play for because of our stack size. We have to call 16 to win 48 so we are getting 48:16 or 3:1 which means that we need 25% chance of getting ze monies to call the all in.

If we say the pfr has 99/QQ+/AQo+/JTs to check shove the flop with, and that because the other player has called ai for 200bb he should have a pretty strong hand and not his pair and straight draw hands, we kind of have to give him a range of JT/99/QQthen we only have 18% chance to win 3 way, needing 25% we have to fold.

However you can see how close the decision is by playing around with the players ranges and seeing what sort of hands they need to be playing this way aswell to make it a call.If the flat caller also has Q9s in his range for two pair on the flop then 3 way we have 25.9% or just enough equity to overcall the all in, on the merit of possibly having the best hand and if we are losing to a straight filling up.

If you were to also include hands like Q8s and 89s then we have 29% and it is a clear call.I've included mainly suited hands to try to allow for the fact that they may not always call with for example Q9 or JT. 

I think that this is a very close decision and you would need reads and a knowledge of the players to make the correct one. As it is I would also c/c the flop against the flat caller, and c/r the flop against the preflop raiser because it's easier for him to have overpairs in his range. Fwiw in real time I see a set and snap get my money in !! If there was a flush draw on the board you'd have to pay me to fold a set.

MereNovice

In Response to Re: NLHE20 - Set Mining - Valid Tactics?:

In Response to NLHE20 - Set Mining - Valid Tactics? : Folding 22-66 may feel dirty but the reality of it is that it's very hard to hit your set on the flop (8.5:1 on the flop and 5:1 for the whole board).

I think that this is a very close decision and you would need reads and a knowledge of the players to make the correct one. As it is I would also c/c the flop against the flat caller, and c/r the flop against the preflop raiser because it's easier for him to have overpairs in his range. Fwiw in real time I see a set and snap get my money in !! If there was a flush draw on the board you'd have to pay me to fold a set.
Posted by beaneh

Thankyou for your detailed post.

I believe that the actual odds are 7.5:1 and 4.2:1, i.e. 12% and 19% respectively.

My read on the original raiser was that he had check-raised with a flopped set on a wet board after being the initial raiser previously so this play was definitely possible. As it turned out, that wasn't the case this time but I was happy enough with my decision. The two actual hands that I was up against were the best possible situation that I could be in and I was 30% to win in that specific situation. I considered it quite likely that I might have been drawing to a 1-outer and passed. I appreciate that some players have "more gamble" in them.

beaneh

In Response to Re: NLHE20 - Set Mining - Valid Tactics?:

In Response to Re: NLHE20 - Set Mining - Valid Tactics? : Thankyou for your detailed post. I believe that the actual odds are 7.5:1 and 4.2:1, i.e. 12% and 19% respectively. My read on the original raiser was that he had check-raised with a flopped set on a wet board after being the initial raiser previously so this play was definitely possible. As it turned out, that wasn't the case this time but I was happy enough with my decision. The two actual hands that I was up against were the best possible situation that I could be in and I was 30% to win in that specific situation. I considered it quite likely that I might have been drawing to a 1-outer and passed. I appreciate that some players have "more gamble" in them.
Posted by MereNovice

I always go the conservative way on the numbers. Those first two were ones I haven't thought about in ages i've rounded the up alot!, ty for correcting me meh if I think 4.2 I think 4.... then i'd be shorting myself will go with just 8 and 5 in my head from now on lol.