[Jake (The Snake)]

Hey Aaron,

Firstly, I think that if you fool around PokerStove some, you will see that the 25% estimate is not far off. Obviously PS isn't perfect for that kind of calculation, but it will get you in the ballpark if you try a bunch of different flops against 5 others. I'd like to know the PokerTracker % as well, but I also recall the 25% number being used quite often on the forums.

In any case, let's use an estimate that says 10/11 times your set holds up, no chance it gets reraised behind you, and 5 opponents. Obviously a favorable situation.

We'll say 89% of the time we lose 3 small bets, so 89 times we lose 3 = (267 SB).

1% of the time we lose 2 SB plus probably 8SB postflop so 1 time we lose 10 = (10 SB).

10% of the time we need to make up 277 SB. That is 27.7 SB per time we hit our set and it holds up. With 5 opponents putting in 3 SB in preflop, that means we need to make up 12.7SB on average postflop.

That's going to be really tough to do on its own. Now when you factor in the possibility that less people call preflop, that it is capped preflop, or most important, that your set hold up less often than 10 out of 11 (which is absolutely the case) then it becomes an easy fold if we are doing this on set value alone.