Middle set plus top pair...do you play this like top set?

[Bandgeek]

I saw the hand that Phil Hellmuth busted out on in the WSOP PLO event.
QQKx and the flop comes QKx.

The way he played the hand got me to thinking...when you have top pair plus middle set, do you discount the possibility that you're up against top set and just play the hand as if you have top set?

[RoundTower]

You can't discount it completely. If your opponent puts in the third or the fourth raise you have to think he probably doesn't have bottom set.

[Acesover8s]

It should be nearly impossible to get away from this hand in a short stacked situation like a tournament.

In fact, I was criticized by a 'name' tourney pro for folding middle set to a raise in level 1 of the same event.

[LA_Price]

To me it depends on the board and the players completely. Against some players i'd go allin if they raised and others i'd muck if the board and stack sizes were right. When most people bet they're basically saying "I have the best hand". When people raise them they generally believe they have that person beat. You as the original bettor have to decide if you trust their evaluation or if they are bluffing.

Some people just don't bluff enough in a game theory sense and don't ever deserve to be paid off by you. You will crush them over the long term by never paying them off(That is if they don't adjust). Their reraising standards are so tight that even if a hand seems improbable it becomes very likely that they do indeed have what they represent. Barry Greenstein discusses this in a pot limit Stud/8 hand in Ace on the river.

[beset7]

Hey I can't find the link but Barry discussed that hand in great detail in a thread in the stud forum a while back. I think it's the only time Barry posted in the Stud forum so it should be easy to find. But it's very insightful.

Suppose you post your first hand (i.e. no reads) at a table in CO with a 100BB stack and flop middle set and top pair in an unraised pot (5 to flop) - board is something like J84 rainbow. It's checked to you and you pot it. UTG then re-raises pot. There are now 30BB in the pot. Calling costs 15, you have 94 left.

How big would his stack have to be to consider folding?