Excellent post.

Consider me jumping on the TPTK/Top Two Pairs/overpairs are excellent, band wagon and I've gone AI with them numerous times. But that's all conditional on a meaningful pre-flop raise. If it's a limped pot then anyone can have anything and it's proceed at caution the entire way. There are plenty of players at the micro stakes who overvalue TPTK/ 2 pair/ Top pair and you can make them pay.

<<What y'all are saying here is that there are times you're 90%+ certain that you're beaten, but you'll call anyway, right?

How do you differentiate between these hands and those where you say "you know, I just don't belong in this pot any more..."?>>

The easy answer is the size of the bet in relation to the pot. (I'll call just about anything on the river if it's nominal in relation to the pot,.)

I'm sure that it also comes with subconciously recognizing betting patterns and realizing that the villians just doesn't make sense.

Finally, players lose big pots when the hands are very close in value (set over set, FH over FH, FH over nut flush, etc.). So it becomes almost impossible to lay down some of the above hands because you really don't know if the AA7Q2 board gave him Queen's over A or A over Q (vs. your A over 7) and I honestly beleive you're losing money by laying these down. So in the back of your mind you are irrationally thinking "He has to have me beat", but he doesn't.