Folding a Set?

This was a hand that was recently posted on a poker forum for discussion. It was played on a deep six-max no-limit hold’em tournament on PokerStars. The blinds are 25-50 and the hero has 6,780 in chips while the villain covers. (That means the effective stack is 135 blinds). The villain seems to have been playing pretty tight, but has given away little or no information to this point.

From middle position the villain min-raises to 100. The small blind calls, and the hero calls the extra 50 chips with 4-4. The flop comes K-8-4 rainbow. Both of the blinds check, as does the player in middle position. So it’s all three of them to the turn, which is a queen completing the rainbow.

The small blind checks again, and the hero bets out for 200 into 300 with his bottom set. The villain calls the 200 and the small blind folds. Slightly off topic, but an interesting point none the less, is that although this looks like an extremely safe board, any A, 5, 6, 7, 9, T or J on the river will leave a potential straight, and with the blinds so slow it’s hard to rule out any hands preflop. (This is one of the many reasons why slow playing is often a bad idea, the river has a nasty habit of completing a lot of draws!)

However, the river is a 2 not completing any straight draws. Our hero fires out 550 into the 700 pot with what is now the second worst set. The villain immediately moved in for 6,450 chips, or 129 blinds. Most of the early replies to the thread in the forum indicated that this was an instant call. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.

Any time you are faced with a bet on the river, you are faced with three choices. Fold, call, or raise. Since this bet is all-in we don’t need to worry about raising. To call the bet, we need to decide how likely it is that we have the best hand, and are we getting the requisite pot odds needed to make it a profitable call.

The most important factor in this is what hand, or range of hands, you think your opponent has. There are other factors involved, including what range your opponent puts you on (this is very important if you think he might be bluffing you) and what range your opponent thinks you have. Here we will concentrate on what range we put our opponent on.

The best place to start this is preflop. He has min-raised in middle position. At the early stages of a tournament this could be a wide variety of hands, anything from T-9 suited to A-A. He checks back the flop, again this doesn’t give us a huge amount of information. On a board like that many players will check back nothing, middle pair, or a set (none of which are necessarily the best course of action, but they are quite likely).

The hero fires the turn and the villain calls. Because the Q completes the rainbow (meaning no flush will be likely on the river) and the board is so relatively safe, he could easily be just calling with a strong hand. Anything from K-Q, A-K, two pair to a set. Because the blinds are so low he could also be calling with an open ended straight draw, middle pair, or even a gutshot plus overcard, like A-K or A-J.

Then comes the important street in this hand, the river. Our hero bets out 550, and the villain goes all in. The pot has 1,250 chips before the villain’s action, and he bets 6,450.

This is a huge overbet, and bets like this are rarely if ever bluffs at these stakes. If the villain wanted to bluff at this pot he would normally have bet the flop, or he could pot-raise the river; either way I very much doubt this is ever likely to be a bluff.

If it isn’t a bluff, what is it? Such a huge over-bet is normally a hand that is certain it is best, and in this case that means a set. (K-Q is possible, but very unlikely since most people will bet the flop with top pair, and also won’t overvalue two pair to this degree, which means the less obvious two pairs are also unlikely).

Pocket two’s are going to fold the turn most of the time, and not shove the river (since it’s hard to see what they are going to be called by, which is the same reason you aren’t likely to see two pair here).

The most obvious hand is Q-Q, since it is congruent with the rest of the hand. Every street makes sense with Q-Q. If it isn’t Q-Q it’s going to be K-K or 8-8 that slow played the flop.

You are unlikely to lose much in the long run by never folding set’s (assuming no obvious flush or straight possibility), but this is a situation where although your absolute hand strength is strong, it is actually very weak compared to the action, your relative hand strength is poor, and since you are getting terrible pot odds you should fold.

Our hero unfortunately did call, only to be shown Q-Q.

Daragh Thomas has made a living from poker over the last three years. He also coaches other players and writes extensively on the boards.ie poker forum, under the name hectorjelly.