According to Urban Dictionary (almost the world’s funniest website), a menage a trois is:
sexual activity involving three people. no more. no less. 3 women. 3 men. 2 women 1 man. 2 men 1 woman. whatever the grouping - all must engage in sexual activity with one another for the activity to be a ‘menage a trois’. otherwise see ‘gangbang’ or ‘gang bang’.
For most normal people, it’s something that doesn’t happen very often - often feeling like it will never happen. The stories always start out with some player who traded up from a couple to a threesome, and a lot of guys think that you have to be committed before you should try to pull it off. What I’m talking about here is turning a pocket pair into a set.”
Menage a Trois
The Facts
At best, your chances of making a set before the flop are just around 20%. So to get the correct odds to play these hands, you need to either play only (and always) when there are four other people calling or - in case you don’t usually play in games where five people take the flop regularly - you need to devise a great way to take advantage of your sets when you get them.
Let’s look at a couple of scenarios of taking advantage of a set. Assume that you called a pre-flop raise with a pair that you could get rid of easily if you don’t catch - like 7-7 - and you think your opponent has big cards, either singles like A-K or a big pair. So what factors come into play?
Your Table Image
First of all, what you do depends on what you’ve done in other situations. If you’re the type of player who bets out if you see something you like as opposed to checking to the raiser, then you can get away with a good-sized bet right up front, period. Your opponents might even call without a pair if he thinks you would bet on a draw, a call that would be dead money in the right situations.
Non-Threatening Flops
There are a couple of flops that will falsely boost your opponent’s confidence: K-8-3o, K-8-2o, K-7-2o, Q-7-2o. If you’ve made your set with one of these, you can expect either a lot of playback from an aggressive opponent or steep calling from a passive one who has an over pair or hit the high card. In fact, if you’re going to slow-play your set, do it with a flop close to these.
Threatening Flops
Flops with no- or one-gap connectors and/or flush threats are occasions for more brittle action. Representing a draw on the flop is great, if the draw doesn’t come. The trick is to get the maximum value out of him on the flop, where he’s still playing defense with the high pair or over pair. Betting close to the size of the flop may get you some playback and over-betting the flop could convince them that you’re defending against draws they don’t have with a hand that’s marginally worse than theirs.
In Conclusion
Hitting a set is relatively uncommon and puts you far ahead of other hands in most situations. So if you’re going to turn your pair into a threesome, make the most of it, cos I’ve heard way too many sob stories (including my own) where the guy bails at the last minute cos he can’t handle the pressure or one of the girls isn’t as attractive as he’d hoped. But for fucks sake, if the offer or chance is there, grab it with both hands - at which point 2 pairs of hands would be phenomenal - but that’s a whole different level of dreaming.
Just remember, if you can get ‘menage a trois’ tattooed on your body and show it off with truth in your eyes, it doesn’t really matter what happened at the poker table. You are officially the man.
- Luke Phillips and Scott Pilson
