Because it is correct 90-95% of the time (and therefore preventing a beginning player from making this mistake too much).

A 2p2 should read the sentence as: "Don't setmine in 3bet pots unless...."

If you don't know what to put on the dots, setmining in 3bet pots is not for you.

im sure that there is gold in this thread but im just not getting it. :s will re read a few times til I pick the bits out of it

One more thing to think about - calling 3bets to setmine when effective stacks are deep (for example, 120-150bb deep).

Many people will call here, because of increased implied odds. Mathematically it is often correct. It may also be a correct play against many opponents. We indeed get good implied odds. Or do we? What we often miss in calculating implied odds is the following: Implied odds are not only determined by how much there is left in the opponent's stack. What matters more is how much of this stack we can realistically expect to win (i.e., not how much villain has, but how much of it he is likely put in the pot to pay us off after we hit our hand)

When stacks are deep and we call a 3bet to setmine against a good player who knows his SPR, we actually decrease our chances of getting his entire stack when we hit a set vs overpair. Decent players know that with deep stacks they get a crappy SPR when they 3bet their big pairs. Deeper stacks require stronger hands at SD when stacks go in. So with deeper stacks, good players are less likely to stack off with merely an overpair or TPTK, and often will not pay you off when you hit a set and show aggression. As opposed to normal 100bb stacks, with deeper stacks in 3bet pots opponents are often not pot-committed on turn or even river. They will also find ways to exploit this tendency that many players have of calling 3bets with deeper stacks with a wider range because of "increased implied odds"

Just some thoughts... I guess calling 3bets to setmine very much depends on who is 3betting you, and not only math

One thing to bear in mind is this - if it's not a maniac 3betting, then they probably have a hand that will look good on most flops where you hit your set. So the same logic applies calling ep raisers - that you have better implied odds versus a stronger starting hand. Also, if your own image is a bit tricky (eg, you've been caught floating the flop and bluffing later) then you're more likely to get at least a couple of streets of action when you hit your set.

Of course you still need the right SPR for it and you'll need probably need to be tricky to maximise your earn.

Yes, gothninja. But if we are tricky and float and bluff sometimes in order to maximise profit, then we didn't call the 3bet to purely setmine

i use 11x as base, tighter vs the kind of players that wont pay me off
looser when i am bigstack and up vs dudes that will pay me off very often
also agree with gothninja about the nits.. depends what kind of player we face,
there are some nits that have big problems with folding the big preflop hands
and others that wont pay you off

OK, some good stuff here, thanks for all the replies.

So Vuggie, basically you are saying, when you call a 3-bet to set mine against a thinking player, you are turning your cards face up and that combined with being OOP makes it very difficult to extract enough value when you hit to make up for all the times you just have to fold to a 3-bet?

And your other point is that bigger stacks = enough odds to set mine is not neccessarily true as it is harder to get enough money into the pot that the villain is committed to stacking off with TPTK/overpair type hands?

i just wanted add a small point..

it is 10% of effective stack. effective stack is the smaller of the two stacks

if a shortstack moron 3 bets, it may be <10% of my deep stack, but will be >10% of his short stack. in this case i won't setmine.

True that. And we're probably not just doing it with small-mid pairs either!