Here's a hand last night that I found somewhat difficult. My opponent here is an over-aggressive muppet. I'm not sure whether he just doesn't realize how weak or strong his holdings are or is actually trying to overplay in order to knock players off of good hands.

Anyhow, from EP I raise JJ to $20, get 3 callers, including this LP muppet. Flop comes KJT with 2 spades--good and bad on my view. I flopped my set but don't like the AQ possibility at all. So, I bet $80 into it. Muppet makes it $180 to go. All others fold, and I flat call.

Turn is yet another spade, now making a flush possible. I don't particularly care for this either, although I really can figure that he doesn't have the flush. The good thing is that this spade is low. My other uncertainty on this board is just which cards I want to pair before feeling completely confident in my hand (I figure something like KT as another definite possibility). I check here (?), and muppet bets $100. I call.

The river is a blank, not pairing the board but not putting yet another spade on there either. I check, and my opponent checks.

He turns over Kd4d for top pair no kicker, and I win.

Does anyone play this more aggressively with the set here? My read on the player did make me more confident in calling, and I was planning on calling a fair amount even on the river (the pot by that time is around $640). Also, if he had checked the turn, I MIGHT have bet the river into him. But even muppets can hit the flop hard. Was I too scared of this board (obviously so in light of his actual holdings, but I still don't see any reason to exclude AQ from his range of possible holdings either).

Unless you guys are very deep, I push the flop all in. There are just too many cards that will kill your action.

He will call your all in with a lot of hands that you have beat like KJ, KT, JT, AK, KQ...etc
Even if he has AQ, youre not crushed.

True, that solves a lot of problems and is probably the way to go.

The stack depth wasn't phenomenal, although large. I had about $750 in front of me, and he had me covered. This guy bought in for $1,500, and it only took him about one hour to lose it all. I'm hoping he stays in the game long enough to make some more contributions.

After the last week of my opponents always hitting 2 outers to beat my flopped boats or runner-runner, etc., I was probably a little paranoid about having the board turn against me. But the last couple of nights have been back with good solid winnings, so I'm just trying to get back in the swing of CONSISTENT $200-$500 nights.

i love this flop b/c when i push after his raise, he can call as a huge dog. against a non-muppet, i would probably make a saner reraise, but it might also be all-in depending on the stacks.

Muppets have to show me the straight or outdraw me and I look at his flop raise as an opportunity to play big. Of course sometimes the muppets show you a good hand, but most of the time the best they will show you is KQ.

I go on the defensive against tricky good LAGs that might hold the straight or the flush draw. Very solid players send me on the defensive too, as they may show AK, but they might well show AQ. I slow down a bunch against both of these types, especially out of position, and try to maintain the pot size as much as possible, unless I have a read that says I should inflate it.