My mortal fear of the turn card

I have got to get over this fear.

A couple of days ago I looked at some old blog post of mine and read that I should not overbet my won hands, chasing away my opponents.

In fact, I read this in a post as well as some old notes of mine...

This problem is really persistent, it seems. I will give some examples based on a tournament I played in tonight. I got dealt KK twice in the first hour... At the end of this hour, I had 1000 in chips (you start with 1200), but this was due to a desperate and stupid short stack who reraised me with Q9s, making it impossible (that is, mathematically wrong) for me to fold.

1. Level 25/50. KK as BB, raise to 200 = 4BB. One caller. I actually played this hand sort of OK, I checked the low flop and he bet 100. I raised to 250, he folded. Still, there was no need to checkraise, I could have check-called.
   
2. Still level 25/50, 8 minutes later: KK UTG. Raise to 150 UTG, extremely loose SB calls. He bets out 250 on the flop, I go all-in?? Why??? Because I am scared of the turn card, that's why. It hurts to admit it, but it is true. ("But what if it is an Ace?")
3. Level 75/150. AA in 2nd position. At least now I don't need to fear an ace on the table. (I would actually prefer not to see any aces on the table, I guess: I'd never make any money...) Minraise (not bad), only BB (same loose player as above) calls as BB. Flop is Qd5d5c. He check-calls twice, first 150 and then 300. (At least I am not going all-in here.) Now I am down to 500. He checks again on the river and I stupidly bid 450. Why? Because I am greedy and want to get as much as possible of my stack in the middle. He folds, of course. I think it would have been difficult for him to fold to a final bet of 150, seeing as the pot was now 1700...

Of course it would be even worse to just limp into pots with these hands and lose them to people who get lucky, but I have really got to face more turn cards with hands like KK and QQ. I absolutely need to stop raising big and going all-in on good hands. I need to tell myself that winning 500 less in a pot is just as bad as losing 500 more.

Hopefully writing an entire post about this subject will help me to remember this lesson and earn more chips in the future!

I did not yet write how this tournament ended. On the very next hand after I got AA, I got JJ UTG. I raised to 3BB = 450 again, there was one caller and the short BB with 900 went all-in! I went all-in to isolate on him, but the idiot caller liked his AQ so much that he could not fold it against two all-ins. The short stack had AA, but I was beating the idiot until the river, which was the final missing Ace...

OK, so it was a setup against AA, but if I had earned more chips earlier, I might have survived even this confrontation (although, to be honest, the idiot is probably also calling with his precious AQs when I put in 500 chips more...) An alternative play here is to flat call the all-in of the short stack and see a flop three-handed. If it does not contain an ace and I go all-in then, the AQ guy might be less inclined to call. What do you think is best?

Anyway after this I made first place in a $20 SNG, so a profit for the night :-) [Note: the above problem (fear of the turn) does not really affect my SNG results, because there is far less post-flop play, especially at the decisive later stages when the blinds get high. I started to play some MTT's again for the variation and also to hopefully improve my play.]