This is a little convoluted, I apologize. There is a question in here eventually.

My understanding is that it is profitable to call a raise with a small pair if you think flopping a set will net an 8:1 return on the initial call. This assumes the raiser indeed has an overpair and that he will pay off. But what if the raiser has KK and an ace flops? Or four spades come and he has 2 red Kings? Or you get outdrawn, or bluffed off on a bad board? Sometimes I hit the set and win less than 8:1, as does everyone.

What if the raiser is a short stack? For example, a player with an 8 BB stack raises x3 BB, e1 folds and I call with pp22. The $ in the pot excluding my call (and including SB & BB) is 4.5 BB. When added to the 5 BB the SS Raiser has behind, my odds for flopping a set (assuming he has a hand and goes with it) are 9.5:1, theoretically making the call profitable.

In reality I would normally fold pp 22 here. But what if the raiser had 16 BB? How about 25 BB? My question is this--considering all that needs to go right (Flop the set, it's the best hand, it holds up and it gets paid) don't I need to revise my 8:1 threshold for calling upward? If yes, by how much? 12:1? 16:1? More?

I hope this makes sense, let me know what seems to work best. Thank you.

1.) You need to on average get villain to put 11.7 times the amount you called pre-flop into the pot post-flop after you hit a set in order to profitably setmine.


dbitel did the math in an older thread that I no longer have a link to. This takes into account that sometimes when you flop a set you lose and in fact usually lose most if not all of your stack.



2.) In this situation you can't make 11.7 times your pre-flop investment. It's obvious why. It is because your opponent does not have that much money. (You need to call 3BB's so you need to on average make 35.1 BB's. There's only like 9 or 10 BB's available. - I kind of got lost here in your example. Even if you thought you had to make 8 times your pre-flop investment you still would have needed to make 24 BB's here so it's still obvious that you can't setmine here.) So you can't call to setmine. Though in this actual case if he only has 8BB's well it might be profitable to just shove it all-in pre-flop. Obviously that depends on his range though.

Against shortstacks, fold them small pairs.

As to the example of KK on A high board when you have small pair: this is where you can bluff or fold based on your reads. You should not use 1/8 implied odds though, I would advice to go for 1/10 for very aggro players who do not fold big pairs and 1/15 for more solid players who actually will fold overpairs to strong action occasionally.