Overvaluing one pair

Something that I see very frequently at $.5/$1 at the deep tables is players greatly overestimating the strength of their good one pair hands:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (5 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP ($125.85)
Button ($287.70)
Hero (SB) ($546.30)
BB ($106.90)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A, 4
1 fold, Button raises to $3.50, Hero calls $3, 1 fold

Flop: ($8) 2, 3, 8 (2 players)

Hero checks, Button bets $8, Hero calls $8

Turn: ($24) 5 (2 players)

Hero checks, Button bets $24, Hero raises to $96, Button calls $72

River: ($216) 3 (2 players)

Hero bets $438.80 (All-In), Button calls $180.20 (All-In)

Total pot: $576.40 | Rake: $2

Results:

Button had Q, Q (two pair, Queens and threes).

Hero had A, 4 (straight, five high).

Outcome: Hero won $574.40

This hand requires some background.  I was sitting on the direct left of the villain of this hand and throughout the entire session had been picking on him ceaselessly.  He was a very bad player playing with some ridiculous PF tendencies (something like 40% VP$IP/5% PFR).  As a result, I had been raising his limps with an extremely wide range of hands (any pair, any two big cards, any ace, any suited connectors) in order to isolate him from the rest of the table and keep him to myself.  On top of that, I was catching some very good hands.  

Perhaps the biggest mistake of this hand not made on the hand itself, but rather the villain's pre-flop tendencies in general. Given his very small PF raising%, the fact that he is raising drastically narrows his range of possible hands. When the flop came small cards and he immediately bet the pot, I had a pretty good idea that his most likely holding was a big pair.  I called his bet with my ace-high, gutshot wheel draw and backdoor nut-flush draw anticipating that if I hit the wheel, I would probably get the rest of his money.  I thought at the time that my ace would probably have been good too, but I wouldn't actively stack off given the possibility of him having AA/AK/AQ.

The villain's next big mistake was betting the turn with the intention of stacking off for another 270bb.  When he bets the pot again on the turn with his QQ, he basically turns his hand face-up as a big pair or perhaps TTT.  Given his image, against a thinking opponent he folds out all worse hands (Tx, medium pocket pairs), gets raised by better hands (sets, straights, two pair), and perhaps gets called by draws (which he will probably stack off to on the river if they hit).  When he got raised, he had an easy fold.  However, he made the mistake that is the focus of this post and came to the mistaken conclusion that his hand was the nuts in this spot.  The net result was that he got 11.5BB in ahead and 276BB in drawing dead.  Two better options for him would have been to bet-fold the turn or to check behind and call a river bet.  Both of these plays protect his stack.  Checking behind gives a free card to potential draws, but also avoids forcing him to make a tough decision if his strong turn bet gets raised.  Since he clearly does not like folding, this was probably the better option of the two.  Willingness to check behind in spots like this also greatly reduces the profitability of opponents floating out of position with marginal draws, since the obvious CR line fails to extract any value on the turn and probably 1 pot or less on the river.  This is nowhere close to the implied 11-to-1 odds required to make such plays profitable. 

Here is another example of this same problem:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Button ($231.05)
Hero (SB) ($306.60)
BB ($278.75)
UTG ($100)
MP ($111.80)
CO ($100)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Q, K

3 folds, Button calls $1, Hero raises to $5, 1 fold, Button calls $4

Flop: ($11) 10, 6, 9 (2 players)

Hero bets $7, Button raises to $14, Hero calls $7

Turn: ($39) J (2 players)

Hero checks, Button bets $22, Hero raises to $70, Button raises to $212.05 (All-In), Hero calls $142.05

River: ($463.10) 3 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $463.10 | Rake: $3

Results:

Button had A, A (one pair, Aces).

Hero had Q, K (straight, King high).

Outcome: Hero won $460.10

Again, the villain in this hand had been playing extremely loose-passive before the flop (50/4 or so).  In this hand, he tried to get clever and trap in an unraised pot with a one pair hand that he would never be able to fold regardless of the flop or actions of other players in the hand.  In the SB, I had an easy raise with KQs, given the buttons PF tendencies.  At this point in the hand, the villain could have re-raised and forced me to either give up my PF raise or play a bloated pot OOP with hand that plays very poorly against the limp-reraising range of players at low limits (I have generally found that the limp-reraise at these stakes is KK+, sometimes QQ or AK).  Instead, the villain kept the pot small with the intention of getting all of his money in regardless of board texture.

On the flop, I flopped two overs and a gutshot and made a completely standard continuation bet that would make him fold a decent chunk of his limp-calling range.  In addition, my hand was drawing live, regardless of his hand due to the presence of a clean gutshot to the nuts.  Given my knowledge of his play, the villain's min-raise on the flop made it clear that he was attached to the hand and led me to believe that I could probably play for stacks were I to hit.  On the turn, a bad card for the villain's hand comes off (JT,KQ,JJ all get there), but he continued to nuke the pot and ended up stacking himself.

I guess the main point of this post is that without the appropriate image and play-style, trying to jam 200bb+ stacks into the pot against competent with one pair is burning money.  Players who consistently nuke the pot with extremely marginal holdings in position can play their big pairs more aggressively and expect to actually get paid off by worse holdings.  However, many players at these stakes only fire multiple barrels with top pair+ and since such hands only come around once in a while, they are extremely reluctant to fold them.  This is a recipe for disaster, since their double and triple barrelling ranges are extremely narrow and consist mainly of hands that they will not fold.

Alright, that's enough rambling for me.  Time for me and Sir Meow to turn in.