I know I made mistakes in my thought process in this hand, but since I'm a relative noob playing 1/2 NL, I am being completely honest in what went through my head at the time. Before posting this, I read a couple of articles on this exact situation and they really didnt prove very useful.

Been playing at this table for about an hour. I am right at 8 hours playing time and a hand or two from going home. Down early in session and took me hours to get back to a decent profit. I am currently sitting with about $675.

I look down at KK in SB. UTG+1 raises to $12. UTG+2 and Button call. I 3 bet to $35. UTG+1 and +2 folds. Button calls. Button has me covered.

Flop comes A76 rainbow. The pot right now is $97. Here is where things start to fall apart for me. I had some history with the button in virtually the same situation about 1/2 hour before where I had QQ in BB and ace comes on flop I check Button bets I fold (I know that play is open to a whole different evaluation as well). The problem here is virtually every time hands go to the river and button shows, he's got it. I mean in the time I was sitting there so far the button, who is a competent Asian player, has built his stack up quite nicely to abou $800 from around $400, so he's been steamrolling over players. Maybe I should have been paying more attention to what hole cards he was playing instead of his results.

In any case, I lead out for $35 after the flop. I knew in the back of my head that there was a good chance this guy didnt have the ace. On hindsight, I probably should have bet more like $50 or $60. Anyway, button raises me to an even $100. Here is where bad thoughts start creeping in my mind. To my credit though, I dont fold immediately and start thinking about what to do. However, I start thinking about how long it took me to get a nice profit and I would still leave with a good profit if I folded here. If I called or re-raised, I could easily get stacked in this situation. I know these thoughts shouldnt enter into my decision making, but they did and I eventually fold.

So I need help with the actual hand as well as some help with not allowing thoughts like I described enter into my decision making. Thanks!

Raise pre way bigger, like 70-75. You're OOP so you want to charge a premium for people to continue against you.

Flop action depends on whether opponent's playing style? Is he the type to float, make plays? Is he tight or loose?

Just to give you some idea on things I think about.
I don't have history or reads in villain so this is just generally speaking.

- Villain called a EP open and flat from button. So I would lessen hands like JJ+, AK maybe AQ from his range and weigh them more towards suited Aces, Broadways, connectors and pairs TT and below.

- Based on the range above how does that interact with this board. He'll have a few weak and medium strength Aces and allot of whiffs or pairs below the ace.

-Now what does your range look like to him. Depends how you've been playing. I.e. is this your first 3 bet all day? You been 3 betting once an hour, etc. Based in that you could have either only AK or a bunch of suited Aces as well along with some other things. But I'd say you have a range advantage on this board vs his.

-Now how do you plan to play all your hands here in this spot?
Let's look at your value hands, AK, AA, AQ. Let's say you bet these hands. Then you can also bet KK, QQ and JJ here because they are protected by your value hands. But let's say you decide it's better to check your value hands. Then you should also be checking your bluffs and medium strength hands as well. All this stuff I talk about above you do away from the table to build your general strategy. The stuff below are your accessories which you incorporate at the table and can allow you to deviate when appropriate.

-then you look at things like pot odds, stack sizes, game flow, reads, villain tendencies.

Not sure if you lift weights at all, but it's akin to building a strength program. You're not going to center it around bicep curls and leg extensions. You're going to build it off large compound movements like squat, bench, deadlift, rows, overhead press. Everything else is icing on the cake and fine tuning.

So a long winded way of saying you can bet or check depending on how you've built your strategy. The mistake people often make is looking at the results of a singular hand and reverse engineering what they could have done to win that one hand. And building their strategy that way as opposed to thinking logically and objectively about it.

Maybe not the answer you were looking for but hope it helps. Good luck.

Good point about raising pre bigger. As I was writing this, I was thinking the same thing, although not as big as you suggested. Will definitely incorporate that into my play.

Until you have more experience don't sit at the game and think you will leave shortly. Once you decide it's time to go just leave. Once you have enough experience to view poker as one long session with interruptions you can look at it better but to begin with it will warp your view in hands too much. You end up thinking about protecting your winnings or earning back your losses too much or how to get home or other stuff too much.

As for the hand in question, your bet sizing preflop and on the flop are off. But once villain raises you folding is best. Sticking around is investing too much money to find out if villain is bluffing or not.

I definitely need to think more about how I appear to my opponents and what ranges I rep when making my decisions, so that was helpful. Also, the point of how of how KK is protected due to me having hands like AK in my range was also very helpful.

Sklansky in "Theory of Poker" talks about it being one long session (I'm re-reading this book a second time after getting back into poker after not playing live for 5 years) so I know that concept. I'm just wondering how long it will take me to truly get that mindset so I dont make poker decisions based on non poker factors. I guess like you say once I get more experience under my belt I'll be able to do that better. Right now I'm at only 100 hours live. I would hopefully expect after 200 hours live to not have these types of thoughts cloud my decision making. In the meantime, I'll take your advice and just quit when I'm thinking about quitting and not linger at the table.

Since I've gotten some helpful replies, I thought I'd share what he said he had. As I was racking up and leaving I asked him what he had. I have no reason to not believe him he seemed like a nice guy. He said he had 22 and put me on QQ or JJ and knew the only way to beat me in the hand was to raise me after my flop bet. He said if I would have re-raised, he obviously would have folded. So I think if I would have increased my bet sizing pre flop and post flop, he at the very least might not have raised me post flop, and he might have even gotten out of the hand pre flop if I would have raised to say $50 initially.

As a fellow weight lifter , how you quoted this was fing beautiful.