1/2 game. No reads as this is my first hand. I'm 44 white guy. Villain is 30ish white guy. I'm in for $200. His stack was a little weird but probably had a little more or less than me.

He opens UTG to $12. OMC type calls. I look down at KK and make it $40. Villain calls.

$89 in the pot. Flop is KJ8 rainbow. He checks, I bet $35 and he calls. Turn is a 6 bringing a second diamond on board. He checks and I can't decide what to bet so I jam $125.

My rationale being that the board is pretty wet and he isn't getting away from AK or JJ so I go with it.

He tank folds saying he had a piece of it so I'm thinking AJ or KQ maybe.

Wondering how y'all would approach the turn. Might be results oriented but now I'm thinking since I sized down on the flop I was set up for a $50ish turn bet and river jam?

$50 on the turn, and $75 on the river, gets it all in.

But there is no assurance we get called on the turn even if we bet $50.

Even a loose player knows that if they call $50 on the turn they are not folding the river.

Your mileage may vary.

Top set is a notoriously difficult hand to make a lot of money on because there are so few other hands out there to pay your off.

When you have less than a pot sized bet left OTT, you need to make sure to bet an amount that makes it incorrect for him to call. Shoving is certainly fine, especially if he has shown some calling station tendencies. However there's no rule that says if you only have $125, and need to bet at least $80 to deny him odds, that you have to just shove. You can go ahead and leave that $45 back for the river. Yeah, you pay him off if he hits, but whatever. He made his mistake when he called. The ideal bet amount is the largest amount that he will call incorrectly given his whole range.

Against a typical 1/2 unknown player I'm totally fine betting $60-$80. Usually just under half pot, like $70, is the amount that traps them in. If he folds his equity, that's fine. If he calls, even better. He could have something like AQ/QT/T9/JT/J9/KQ, diamonds, etc. I could plug his range into stove and try to figure it out.

I think turn is fine, I mean we arent getting value from a missed draw on the river so if thats what you put him on get it in now.

I would have made it $60 pre, then $75 on flop and jam the turn giving him more attractive odds.

Why $60 pre? I would get it if we were OOP, but that's just under 1/3 of V's stack. You're literally folding out everything except AA that snaps you, a rare QQ, and an even rarer AK which we can discount since we have blockers.

$40 IP keeps V's range wide and lets us extract value from a much wider range. We don't get KK that often to just win 12BB risk-free and call it a day (although that's a fine result if you prefer to sacrifice some EV for less variance)

^ live players dont open wide, and when they do they dont fold because implied odds, BBJ, high hand, lucky night, etc. #1 mistake live players make is preflop so thats where I like to hit them the hardest. Then I value bet thin and small postflop to keep that 50% of the deck range in play.

I bet more on the flop, say $55 or so...basically whatever you would bet with AK or KQ there. The flop is the street where people are most likely to pay you off, so start building a pot. This also allows for you to get stax in comfortably by the river.