For all you number crunchers....

[bumble]

What percentage of the time that I get three of a kind (on the flop) will another player also get three of a kind? Would it be profitable in the long run to raise on the flop and go all in if reraised with every three of a kind??

My example: I held 10h,10c raised two dollars and was called. Flop came 5d, 10s,Jc..... I raised to $4 and was reraised to $8 and I went all in. Turned out he had the pocket pair of jacks. I was fine with that as I felt I did the right thing. More times than not I felt I would win.

[scgolfer]

I would not go all-in with every SET. It totally depends on position, what else came on the flop (flush draws, straight draws, board pair, top cards, etc). I would certainly play it strong partly to charge anyone drawing a lot of money, as well as you will get information from the others on their hands. Everyone here has been beat by slow playing trips as well. Sure it was mostly bad luck on your part having second best set. Next time save the hand history to post here so we can help you more by seeing more such as postion, flop, chip sizes, etc. It does suck to be second best.

[johnnyawe]

When I have a set, I'm going to play it as if the only thing that can beat me is a straight, flush, or full house. If there isn't a threat on the board for any of those, I'm pretty comfortable going all-in. I think this has to be a winning strategy in the long run, even though occasionally we'll get beat by a higher set.

Sorry, I don't have the numbers to back up my claim. Hopefully someone here will help out with that.

[Fnord]

Dude, if you're not comfortable going all-in on a set you'll get run over. A better set (particuarly on the flop) is extremely rare and worst case you have a bunch of outs to hit your boat. It's not a matter of if I want to put all my chips in the center of the table, it's just a matter of how they're going to get there.

I've played thousands of hands of NL/PL hold'em and only laid down a set once (4 flush on the river with multiple players seeing the flop, it was a good laydown), and maybe a couple more times I made crying calls with them.