The Difference Between Trips and Sets in the Poker Business
Why knowing and understanding the terms equals greater poker profits
TRIPS VERSUS SETS It amazes me how few poker players really know the difference between the term “trips” and making a “set”. It’s true that both terms describe three-of-a-kind in the simple sense but the reason there are two separate terms is because they describe two separate conditions. If you have a pocket pair and you hit a matching third card when the flop comes down then you are said to have made a “set”. If you are holding one card-let’s say an Ace and you hit two further Aces at the flop then you are said to have made “trips”. You can now begin to see why the different term is required. Rather obviously the “set” is a stronger hand than the “trips” even though they amount to the same three-of-a-kind. Why? Simple, because with a pair on the board an opposing player who is holding a pocket pair has the greater potential to make a Full House than someone with “trips” who is relying on the communal pair to give him or her three-of-a-kind.
THE POKER BUSINESS When online poker first started to catch on a lot of pundits were likening it to the dot com bubble which burst in the late nineties. It has proved to be a totally different animal. There are a score of major gaming site companies now firmly established on the London Stock Exchange and the yawning difference between them and all the pre-crash dot com companies is that they’re almost all making significant profits. In other words their stock values reflect their real life earnings not some far off fantasy potential associated with the likes of groomyourpetbadger.com. The second negative put about by early pundits was that poker might prove to be just a fashionable fad. This was always a pretty stupid calculation given how bricks and mortar poker has held the imagination of its followers for at least a hundred and fifty years. A high tech, cheaper and easier-to-use form of the game piped to the entire world across the internet was hardly likely to be LESS successful and so it has proved. And my point is? There are lots of ways to make money out of poker and one of them is to watch the share price action of some of the large sites and buy on dips. The largest have settled from the rush which always attends the first listing and most of the shock waves have been taken out of the stocks. It’s now possible to play these shares in the same way as you would a hand of Texas Hold’em. By studying the odds, weighing up comparative values against the competition and placing a bet on the strongest proposition. Good stockbrokers tend to make good poker players. The reverse should also be true if you stick to a field you believe in.
