I have seen lots of advice on this board that you should never risk your entire stack to TPTK. And as my game has progressed, I have taken that advice and progressed past the donk stages of regularly donking off my stack to the TP set hunters.

But lately when playing against certain players, I am beginning to feel that this advice needs to be ... modified. If a player knows that I am never willing to risk my entire stack to TPTK, he stands to win a lot of money for me, because I will have TPTK much more often than I am going to have 2-pair or better. And it seems like a lot of LAGs are profitting from this mentality.

If I really won't risk my entire stack on TPTK, and everyone knows this and plays accordingly, then I probably shouldn't raise AK-AQ to begin with.

So I am beginning to rethink this a little and trying to adjust my game accordingly. I made a couple of gutsy call a couple days ago on the turn for 24BB and then on river for 64BB at $50NL with AJ on a J high board because it just seemed like he was betting too much if he really wanted to get paid off, and sure enough he was betting w/ air.

But then I lost a stack yesterday because I was sure some LAG was just playing back at me, and this time he had bottom 2-pair.

But even if I break even, I still feel like for metagame reasons I have to be willing to defend TPTK against LAGgy opponents when I think they are just making a play.

So, does anyone else agree with me. And if so, what are the tricks you use to distinguish between a LAG that is making a play and a LAG that has the goods?