Sometimes it Doesn't Pay to be Aggressive

So I am playing in a Full Tilt SNG early in the tournament and I look down at Q-Q in middle position.  So I think I'll play this and see what comes on the flop.  I make a standard raise of 3 times the big blind and I am heads up with the cut-off who smooth called my raise.  His call gives me no useful information.

The flop comes K-4-J with two hearts.  I'm thinking BINGO!  But there is always the possibility that my set is second best if he has K-K in the hole.  I decide to probe here,

looking for some information.  My HUD tells me that this player is pretty passive pre-flop but is hyper-aggressive post-flop.  I put out a bet of about 1/3 the pot and my opponent smooth calls.  At this point I put him on something like A-K through A-J or some kind of heart draw.  I make up my mind that if another heart shows up I am walking away.

The turn is the Tc, a brick for me and I am pretty sure that it was a brick for him as well.  Again I decide to bet but because I am mostly concerned that he is on a heart draw I want to price him out of that draw.  I decide to bet 2/3 the pot.  This makes the price to call right around 2.5:1 and his odds for completing the hand are around 5:1.  A call, if made here, is a mistake on his part if he was on a draw.  It is even worse if he has an A-K or even a big pair.  At this point the only hand that beats me is K-K.  He smooth calls my bet.  I am now ready to dismiss anything but a heart draw and he is betting on the implied odds if he happens to hit the river.

The river is the Js.  He missed the flush.  I decide to bet for value here betting half the pot.  He raises me doubling my bet.  Here is where I made my big mistake.  I thought for a second or two.  He missed his draw and he is trying to bully me into thinking that the Jack hit him for a set.  The trouble is that I had the bigger set if that were the case.  Then I thought that If I were to raise here could I extract any more money.  I didn't think that he would keep up the charade if I exerted additional pressure but I wasn't going to get away from my set.  I called.

He turned over the K-K and I just shook my head.  I wasn't gone, but I was severely crippled and went out in 8th place a few hands later.

Lessons Learned

A set is a big hand.  It is hard to get away from one, especially when your normally aggressive opponent is just calling with a drawing board like the one in this hand.  In this case, I let my natural aggression take over when I might have been cautious when a king showed up on the flop.  A check on the turn might have saved me some chips while the bet really didn't give me any additional information.  If I checked on the turn and my opponent bet out I would be more likely to read at least one king into his range and maybe even a pair behind.  Putting him on a wide range of hands is not unusual, after all he was playing raggedy hands about 70% of the hands to that point.  With only a single and specific pair that beat my set I pretty much dismissed it as a reasonable possibility and paid the price for that mis-read.