Denethor,
I know you want to play TAG, but you are thinking way way too tight. If you have QQ and the flop comes AQ4 rainbow, you should be jumping up and down, not thinking you are beat. Not only is your hand going to be tall almost everytime this happens, but you don't even have any strong draws to worry about (no flush draws and only one possible gutshot straight draw). In hold'em the odds to get dealt a pocket pair are 13:1 and when you do hold a pocket pair the odds of flopping a set are 11:1. You aren't going to flop sets that often on a non paired board and when you do, you almost always have the best hand. The odds of you having AA, him having QQ and you both flopping a set are extremly low. If you are going to throw away middle set on a regular basis because you put the guy on top set what hands are you going to like? The other thing I don't understand is, you had TPTK and you bet the pot all the way through. However, you said if you were him you'd have thrown away the three Queens. Why would you throw away three queens but play top top for all your chips? Top top can be beaten by alot of random hands becuase all it takes is two pair to beat it(in that hand he could have easily had aces up). However, his three queens was the second nuts so I don't know who would lay that hand down. If I were you, I'd loosen my play up alot, see alot more flops. I read your earlier posts stating that you have an ultra tight starting hand selection to minimize post flop mistakes. If you are just starting to play you should play more pots and welcome mistakes (thats the only way to learn). When I started playing poker there was no online micro stakes and I had to learn the hard way playing 1/2 hold'em and losing hundreds of dollars at a time. You should take advantage of the fact you can learn on very low stakes (or ever for free if you want) and loosen your play up a little bit. If you try some different styles you'll learn more and get a feel for which style works best for you when you start moving up in stakes. Just a thought, good luck.
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