[joseki]

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I'm more worried about a superdraw than a set. After the bet and raise on the flop, a relatively tight and aggressive player with a set is likely to just go ahead and push, especially considering how drawy the board is. I'm thinking his likely holdings are things like KQ, QT, T9, 76, or 65 diamonds, drawing to 12 outs and hoping that BB pads his draw. He might even do this with as little as T9 (OESD) or any two diamonds. It's also just barely possible that he's slowplaying an overpair (if he's fed up with you stealing and getting tricky/trappy) or that he's got QJ/JT and is hoping that you are FOS.

I just think it's more likely that villain is drawing than that he is super slowplaying a set. Since I just improved to the top two I'd bet $25 and call a push. On the river I'm checking behind on ANY card that doesn't give me a boat and I'm making a crying call if villain open-pushes a scare card (this turn bet commits me to the pot). Checking behind is just too awkward considering how many draws there are out there; I'm dreading almost half the deck, and so I don't want to have an ugly decision for lots of money when one of them hits. Deciding if a particular scare card killed me or not is never a fun chore.

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I 'knew' he had a set, but I talked myself into b/c with rationalization along these lines. Maybe it was the best play, but he did have a set of 8's. It might be results oriented, but he really tipped the strength of his hand by cold-calling the flop, I just ignored it.

In hindsight, I wonder if a different flop action would be better. How does the hand play out if I raise more or less? Does a bigger raise force us to discount the drawing hands even further, and make the fold easier? Or, if we flat call the donk, or maybe minraise, is there enough room to find a fold before it all goes in?