[sherbert]

Yes Pete, this is sort of frustrating. One question - why do you find it frustrating? You must know that there will be spells when the cards and/or the flops run dry.

Having been in this situation live and online I now tend to take the approach of always folding preflop unless I have a nice hand (I think T987 is a very nice hand, btw, but lacks showdown strength) and then hoping to trap with a big flop for my hand.

It is normal that there will be spells when this strategy does not work. No strategy will always work. One alternative is that suggested by your friend to start gambling it up even more preflop. But that is only going to end up with much bigger variance and often very small edges to you. As Dave said, why bother?

The other is to go into check call mode when you catch a bit of the flop, say the top pair in the example you mentioned and hope to draw out to 2-pair by the river. Of course, this is flawed and very high risk as well.

Wait for a good flop and then take all his stack is the best deal.

HTH