The hands where I seem to be losing the most money are when I have something like TPTK or 2 pair and I've raised pre-flop but get called by a small pocket pair and they hit their set as I equally connect with mine.

the other night... AQ raise 4x BB... 2 callers.

Flop is 2 5 5 ... 2 checks to me, I lead out with half pot bet. 1 caller.

turn is J ... check to me, I bet half the pot, he raises pot size (the pot was about $3.50 after my bet, so he bet somewhere between $3 - $3.50)

J5 didn't seem right... pocket Jacks without a preflop reraise? didn't seem likely
Seemed like he was trying to rep the flush (or had smaller made flush), so I reraised him

I was drawing dead to his pocket 2's. yuck.


I can usually get away from sets if there was no preflop raise, since in general, if I didn't feel the hand was worth a preflop raise, it's probably not worth my entire stack.

I know the small set is a sneaky and deadly weapon (I've used it often myself), but once I've raised preflop and hit a pretty big hand like that am I making a mistake in this spot or do I just reload and chalk it up to his good fortune to hit an 8-1 hand?
Do you worry about being exploited by the small set in this situation?

That's poker, baby

Just do the same back to him when you have pocket pairs

In this spot folding is pretty awful considering the only logical hands that beat you are 22 and 55. He can have a worse flush, a 5, a pocket pair that just picked up a flush draw etc. No way you should be getting away from this one. Against certain villians you can fold TPTK type hands e.g. when you get raised on the turn and the villian is nitty enough that you are pretty sure he's not doing it with a 1-pair hand. In general though I think you should spend less time worrying about spots like this and more time worrying about other postflop situations.

yeah, that was my initial feeling... i mean TPTK... you got a pair. weakest made hand in poker. i can get away from that depending on the board and my reads...

but i was picking apart some of my hands last night and wanted to see if this was a leak, since the two times when i ran against the small set was really the only time i had losing sessions this week...
well that and the time i thought i could push a player off a hand when I missed my open ender, (he called me with TPWK on a 3 flush & a straight draw heavy board) but i digress.