Ragnar4's thoughts about sethunting
--This is not meant to be an article for noobs as much as someone who knows more than me to read, and perhaps correct my thinking about sethunting.
Since I've become serious about poker, I've probably put down about 15-20k hands/month in the last 4-5 months. During this time, I've come to believe that the most pure form of "Flop sets and get paid" is not profitable, unless playing at the dirtiest of dirty tables at the super micros. 5nl and 10nl require a few more tools (albeit simple ones) to justify hunting for sets.
After reading Professional No-Limit Holdem (lawl SPR) and re-reading my 2p2 library again (SSH, THeory and Practice, etc etc.)
I've come to the conclusion that there is more than one way to get value out of your sets.
I think any time you post a hand here in BC that involves you flopping a set, no matter what board, no matter who for opponents the stock answer is: GET ALL THE MONEY IN YOU TARD, DO THIS BY RAISING THE FLOP.
The trick, that I'm discovering, is having basic knowledge of your opponent(s), and doing your best to assign them to a range, which is LDO. What I've struggled with, until just recently, is this: I play the hand out in my head before I click the bet, call, or fold button depending on my opponents range.
I don't play it out the way I'd like it to happen which would be something like this: He bets the flop, I call with 55, and spike a 5 on the flop, he bets, I pukeshove, he calls, I turn a quad 5, and two hotties in bikini's present me my money.
I play it out as closely as possible to reality for my opponent and the reads I've made. ie
--My opponent who is a 25/20 super aggressive monkey who I have notes on that suggests that when he plays, he plays aggressively all three streets even when OOP, but he's capable of slowing down when played back at, he also ALWAYS opens to 5xbb preflop.
If you were to post this hand in the BC without that prior read, you would get the EXACT opposite advice that you should be following.
Spenda would come into the thread and say "Raise the flop, LDO you poopy head." Then he would lock it and tell you he was tired of your crap.
Go back and look at the read, and imagine that you flopped top set on a T72r board against his PFR with 100bb, what's the best way to play the hand. Play out all 3 streets in your head. What about 200bb? What about 50bb? In all 3 cases, I hope you find that raising until the river is pretty much out of the question. In the 50 and 100bb hands, you pretty much get it all in without ever having to raise, and you limit potential value by raising before the river in the 200bb scenario.
At first, Poker players played only the Break Even point of Flopping sets, figuring if they got 8.5-1 to call, they were good. Then as sethunting evolved, different numbers came out, 10-1 was a better "break even point" because every once in a while you'll get set over setted/outdrawn and whatnot. So that was the Call point for a while. Now most people will tell you that 15-1 is the thresh-hold to draw to when set-hunting. Because playing to breakeven is stupid. Not only that, but you should strive to GET 15-1 of your opponents money into the pot, not just him having 15x whatever his raise was in his stack. IE if he raised to .10 Preflop, you better figure you can get 1.50 out of him to make your call profitable. In most cases that's his stack, or relativley close to it.
Does that mean if he's only got 12x or 13x in his stack you should fold 55 on the button to his PFR HU. The answer isn't always no, but as always, it's read dependent.
If you can get all of your opponents in the middle 100% of the time when you catch good, then yes, you could justify (barely) a call here, but if your opponent is EVER capable of folding a hand, when you both hit, things get different. Which is why we need to add another element to our play: The Float.
Let's say your read on your opponent is: 13/10 supar nit that gives up on the turn more often than he should, seems to have an "indian behind every tree" sort of mentality.
In this case, you call with your 55, whether you hit or not, and when he checks to you on the turn, you bet out as long as the turn wasn't scary for you. (IE you figure he's got AA-88 AQs+ and AK which would amount to like a UTG+2 or MP sort of range for a nit) Pre-flop, and you figure you can take AA, KK, and QQ out of his hands when the board comes K64 on the flop he c-bets, you call, and then he checks to you on the turn. You can fire any non queen, non ace non king and profit as long as your willing to fold any check/raises.
Even when your opponents do have enough money in their stack, the float is a pretty reliable weapon in this instance if they do have a tendency to go flat after the flop.
I guess, what I'm getting at, is when playing sets or better here in the BC, we have this "bleargh get all the money in the pot as quick as possible" mentality. Which is normally standard, as long as your think your opponent is going to co-operate. It's up to you to determine when, and how often your opponent is going to co-operate your "standard" flop raise.
The question I intend to ask myself next, and which I'm not comfortable with is: If set hunting OOP is no bueno HU, how many more players need to be added in order to call to set hunt with 33 or equivalent to be more profitable. I'm thinking that 2 other players is probably the threshold, but I'm going to do some math before I decide to commit to that number.
