[Nick C]

The reason you don't have the odds to call for set value is that you'll sometimes lose to set over set (like actually happened). Also, occasionally the flop will be scary enough (as in KKQ) that Villain won't stack off versus your monster.

If it weren't for those things, then you would almost have the odds to play for set value (the odds against flopping a set are about 7.5 to 1). (Edit: Oops, you would have the odds under those circumstances -- I did the math wrong and thought you were only getting 7:1 even with implied odds -- but the circumstances I just described are imaginary anyway.)

The possibility of losing to set over set hurts more than I used to realize, by the way. The thing is, we're relying on implied odds to play, and that 8.4 percent of the time that Villain spikes a two-outer on the turn or river after we get all our money in on the flop really hurts. It means we're just breaking even on 17 percent of our ~12 percent shot (even if Villain will always stack off, his suckout potential means that our implied odds are not perfect).

And, er, there's probably a better way to express what I just said, but if I'm remembering correctly, if we know we're up against a bigger PP that Villain will stack off with, we still need for the pot size + the remaining effective stacks to be about 11 times bigger than what we actually have to call.