Recently I watched a poker video while stuck on yet another long plane flight over the Pacific. The subject was higher-stakes, more advanced Hold'em poker, and the instructor made an offhand comment about set mining that has been rattling around in my jet-lagged brain ever since. Here's the setup:The hero was multi-tabling 9-handed $2/5 hold'em with $500 stacks. He had deuces in the small blind. It folded around to a late-position villain (the hijack seat, I think) with a moderate stack of $300 or so, who open-raised to $17. By my calculations, the hero had implied odds of 300/15 = 20x to make the call (he already had $2 in the pot for his small blind, ergo the denominator is 15 and not 17).
It seemed like a no-brainer to me to make the call, especially given the 15x rule that this same hero recommends in another, smaller-stakes video. In this situation, however, the hero folded. During the fold, he commented, "The villain's probably stealing, so I'm not getting enough implied odds to make this call. I could raise, but this guy tends to come back over the top. If he was in earlier position and open-raised, I'd make the call and try to hit my set. And if he had a full stack, I *might* make the call, too. But against this late raise, I'm not getting enough implied odds."
Huh?
Oh.
Wow!
It took me a while to digest this concept, but I think I now get it. At the micro-stakes that I play at, this concept probably isn't as important to implement, but at the higher dollar levels like $2/5 it's something to think about. When you're getting raised by a late position opp, he probably *doesn't* have a hand. I.e., it's a steal. So even if you do hit your set, you're probably not going to get paid off as frequently as if the opp had raised from early position and, therefore, more likely has a made, strong hand.
Subtle concept, higher long-term EV results. It's pretty cool to see how the thinking shifts at the higher stakes against better opponents.
Like I said: Wow.
All-in for now...
-Bug
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