55 in Middle Position

[Queso]

5/10 NL Cash game. 10 handed. Everyone has about $1,000. An unknown player raises to $40 from UTG. It is folded to you in middle position.

You hold
What should you do?
You may choose only one

Raise

Fold

Call

All-in 10%, call 90%

Raise to $130 about 30% of the time, call 70%

Raise to $175 about 30% of the time, call 70%

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[Bigevil19]

I might just call here and hope to flop a set or better

[idmtchris]

Not sure if set mining is profitable here with several people left to act, anyone of them can put force you to fold with a raise. If your read on the remaining players is that they are pretty TAG, you may get away with it. But other than that small pairs are usually better off being folded with people behind you after a raise. If I was in cut off and knew I could maintain position I might call.

[busymm]

I would fold. Not a good position to play a small set. Also to boot by calling you give the straight/flush hands better odds to call you that could be left to act. Also if there is much re-raising going on you would have to fold. On the flip side a call might work well for you due to the implied odds of the stack size but I wouldn't count on it since you would have to fold if there is much re-raise pre flop anyways.

[SilentBobAK47]

Tough one here. You figure UTG has a strong hand and you could win quite a bit from him if we hit a 5 since the implied odds are good. At the same time there are others left to act behind us. The biggest factor though is that he's an unknown so we don't know what he's capable of doing. With that in mind folding is probably best.

[DangerMouse]

Busymm made a nice point that if there has been a lot of re-raising we`d be better off folding. However we don`t have any info of that nature so playing in a vacuum call and hope to hit a set.

[busymm]

After some thought I changed my mind. For most of these hands you are to assume that you have a tight table image if I am correct. So with that in mind. The best timne to bluff a new/unknown player is when they first sit down at the table. The rest of the table will know you as tight and if you were to raise you might get the remaining players to fold thier hands. The unknown player may see you having a stronger hand than you truly do and either fold, call or raise.

If he folds you win. If he calls and the flop contains a Ace or King or mabe even a Queen you might be able to win by representing these with a c-bet and win the hand that way. If the flop contains no over cards but does have a 5 then you have a truly well hidden hand. You can then play weak and mostly likely double up depnding on the texture of the flop.

If he instead re-raises your pre-flop raise then just let the hand go. I think the correct answer is to raise...though if it was me I might just fold it and see how they play.

[RyckyRych]

Getting 25:1 to set mine? Call.

[Queso]

Originally Posted by idmtchris

Not sure if set mining is profitable here with several people left to act, anyone of them can put force you to fold with a raise. If your read on the remaining players is that they are pretty TAG, you may get away with it. But other than that small pairs are usually better off being folded with people behind you after a raise. If I was in cut off and knew I could maintain position I might call.

I thought that was the whole idea behind set-mining... it might take a little bit of investment (ie: calling a reasonable pre-flop bet), but the more the merrier in the hand, right? That's how you get paid huge when you hit. (I thought)

Phil Gordon says he'll call up to 5x the BB as long as he has more than 50BB in his stack to try and hit a set.

[Queso]

Originally Posted by RyckyRych

Getting 25:1 to set mine? Call.

sorry I'm dumb, but please explain this to me?