was this KK weakly played?

[jbright]

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Ugh... I don't like the way this hand turned out, mostly because of your opponent. Sounds very tricky. What types of preflop raises was he calling earlier, and with what? Was he making solid calls? He's out of position here... so either he has a monster preflop, a really nice drawing hand (like AKs), or believes he can outplay you after the flop.

My rule of thumb is, if you don't want to get stuck with a tricky decision after the flop, raise up the flop so that only a good, second best hand will call you. Maybe 6xBB in this case? After all, the villain is already in for the BB, so it costs him 3xBB.

On the flop... there aren't too many flops that are better for KK than what fell. If he has a set, you're screwed. So why call the $15 raise? That call pretty much told him you have a big pair. At this point, any variety of scare cards will allow him to buy the pot, especially if he feels that you are good enough to fold a big pair. So you either move in on him, or you fold. A call against a tricky player puts you in too weak a position. What if the scare cards DIDN'T come on the turn and river? Do you call him down?

My play: Preflop raise to 5-7xBB. Flop, raise to $15-$20. If he's going to re-raise you, it can't be cheap. If he reraises you at this point, you fold.

-NC

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sorry didnt respond earlier to your thoughtful post. Villain really was hard to read - I ultimately think he was clueless but aggressive... but in some situations that can be harder to play against than a good player because it's hard to interpet their moves.

I agree I should have raised more on the flop... I was actually trying to draw him to make a bad call w/ a lesser hand than mine, but then his reraise threw me off. A stronger raise by me would have better defined his hand, and would've either won the pot there or made it easier to fold to a re-raise. In the end I think he prob. had set or two pair, backed off on the turn when the flush card fell, then pushed on the river b/c i checked behind on the turn.
But I also think if I bet the turn he would've called anyway.

As for pre-flop, i find KK from EP frustrating. If you raise too much, you scare everyone and risk just getting the blinds; if you raise 3-4x, you risk getting too many ill-defined callers and being OOP; if you limp hoping for a raise then you'll often fail to build a pot and also let in any Ax who could hit the flop.