My Opponent Beat Me To The Punch

PP 30+3. Four players left with 100/200 blinds. By bullying the table, I was 2nd with about T1830. Raised T400 UTG with J /images/graemlins/spade.gif7 /images/graemlins/spade.gif. Only caller was SB, the chip leader with about T2900 and the only one who showed resistance to my early steals. With a flop of 7 /images/graemlins/club.gif2 /images/graemlins/heart.gif7 /images/graemlins/diamond.gif SB led out with T200. I mulled for a moment, figuring he was on a medium pair or maybe overcards, I just decided to call planning to shove it in on the turn. Turn Q /images/graemlins/heart.gif. Opponent pushed. Great! KQ, or AQ I thought and I gladly called. River Q /images/graemlins/club.gif I was right he had KQ for a higher trips and the bubble burst.

Questions:

1)Having an aggressive image in the past was my PF raise too aggressive? Should I have folded and waited for a better opportunity?

2) On the flop, should I have re-raised and maybe should have pushed?

My after-the-fact thinking is YES! YES! But I'd like to hear your opinions too. Thoughts?

[aces961]

1)
If you were utg I think you might have gotten a little carried away with stealing for your stack size if you had a bad image at that point.
On the button I think stealing with almost anything is ok though I don't really agree with the min raise, but if the big blind would have folded a large percentage of his hands to it its ok.

2) Its seems that if the sb was the chip leader and you had just under 2k chips he had 3-4 chips. Most players I've seen at the party 30s with that chip lead would have reraised you preflop with a medium pair or would have bet more than min on the flop, so I think putting him on the pair instead of overcards is pretty unlikely. Now with overcards, there are no flush and straight draws he could make on the turn so the most he can have is 6 outs to a 2 out draw against you. Calling on the flop is a must here. On the turn if a overcard hits you need to raise all in or bet if checked to you. If he has hit his pair you get all in with him on the turn and he has 2 outs to win, I'll take these odds anytime bubble or not. If he hasn't hit he probably has no outs to win and will fold to your raise or you get to call a bluff all in.

On the off chance he actually had a pair you would want to raise on the flop, but the odds of this are so small that the minimal gain from playing the hand like this is outweighed by the chance he has two overcards and would fold to a raise.

I think you nailed it with my mini-raise PF which I don't normally do unless trying to trap. My previous steals were 3-4x bb. I think subconsciously, I was not sure of what I really want to do - fold or raise and probably telegraphed it to SB who, aside from having me covered, has a pretty decent hand.

No, I think it was an intimidating (not bad) image. /images/graemlins/wink.gif