[PantsOnFire]

Are you saying you start with 87 and flop trip 7s but you are afraid of kicker trouble?

Here is what I look at when I am considering kicker problems:

1. Some hands are more prone to kicker trouble than others. The worst hand is Ax. When an A hits the flop, your first concern is your kicker. Trip aces with weak kicker are also a concern however, it is half the concern given that there is only one A out there.

2. Things change in a raised pot. When there is an early raise, hands like AJ, KQ and KJ can face kicker problems and that's why you usually don't cold call early raises. However, in an unraised pot, now AJ looks a lot better when an A hits the flop.

3. The kicker is also related to what the highest card is on the board. For example you have T9. If it is a raised pot and the board is 9 3 2, you can assume that A9, K9, etc. is less likely. You are really worrying about an overpair in this situation but you are ahead of AK, AQ.

4. When it comes to trips, it is half as likely that your opponent has the same hand as you with a different kicker.

5. You are more likely to have kicker issues in a multiway pot. Although in an unraised pot, lots of players may be on draws. To me, this is a good time to keep the pot small and if somebody hits his draw, then just give up.

6. You also have to look at it from villain's point of view. If the board is paired, and villain has TPTK or an overpair, he is thinking about whether you hit those trips. And he will try to figure out your starting hand to determine how likely it is you are playing that trip card in your hand.

So in your example, say you had 87 and the board was Q 7 7. If it is a raised pot, then you can say that hands like A7, K7 etc. are much less likely. If you get action here, it is more likely to be from AQ or an overpair. If it is an unraised pot, then hands like 97 or A7 are more plausible.

Low trips are probably less likely to run into kicker problems than high trips. For example, if you are playing QJ and the flop is J J 6, then players could very well have KJ or AJ.

When figuring out your kicker troubles, you need to consider what kind of cards villain could be playing that could have you outkicked. Some tight villains never play Arag so you have to be careful when you have Arag.

In general, I worry very little about set over set. I worry quite a lot about top pair, weak kicker. Trips falls somewhere in between and depends on the factors I have discussed.