Can you lay down bottom set with a "safe" board?

Set on set is always the ultimate cooler hand... I got hit pretty hard with one this weekend, got stacked off for $550.

I was pretty mad at myself afterwards. I've never layed a set down before on a flop where no strait or flush were possible yet. But I was so confident in my read that the guy had QQ (board was Qd8s5s - I had 55). There were two suited cards down there so it was a draw-rich board and it was 4 way action, so people were pushing their hands. I was invested for only about $70 in the pot at the time... and the way the action unfolded, I just KNEW that I was up against top set. I made the call for the rest of my stack anyway and threw it all in dead to one out.

I've seen Phil Helmuth go broke set on set on poker after dark before, but that still doesn't make me feel better.

Eh?

First of all please don't try to imitate Hellmuth in a cash game.

Secondly though you would need an extremely good read to lay down 55 in that spot. You'd have to give action/image and stuff before anyone could actually give you input on that, but it is a very unique situation where you can be folding a set on any board let alone a draw-heavy one like that.

The action image of the player with the top set was pretty solid... he had only been playing for about 20 min or so, but I hadn't seen him do anything stupid. Everything pointed to QQ.... blah.

unless you have a very specific live read, or there is some kind of dynamic, i don't fold a set there unless we're quite deep (like maybe 200BBs+), and even then, i still consider other plays pretty heavily

If you need help learning how to fold big hands, play some PLO for awhile. And in the future, trust your reads.

The ability to fold sets at NLHE is one of the most useless and expensive to develop.

If loosing $550 hurts you, move down in stakes.

Losing $550 doesn't hurt me... I was just pissed at a mistake I made that I knew I could have avoided. I beat myself up when I play bad.

I won $1000+ in another game later that day and still finished the weekend in the black... but not making that mistake would have made it a much nicer turnout.

I would fold that hand 0% of the time. It was a "setup" hand and you can't do nothing about it.

No. Atleast not online. And live you would need a huge tell.

Its all easy to think back, but the truth is probably that your read was not strong enough to lay it down. If you think about it too much it just amplifies in your head and you feel that you should have laid it down when in fact it is a cooler and you need to move on.

I would love to be as good as Hellmuth in a cash game...

lol have you seen him play? I'd happily play him in HU cash for a lot of money.

yep phil hellmuth is a tool.

as to your OP....i dont think its impossible to lay down this hand...but still...i would never lay it down...this exact thing happened to me about a month or so ago.

i was sittin with 33 facing a Q 3 7 board. other dude had QQ and busted me and my trips, cost me about 120 bucks.