I'm having trouble with this. If I have a hand like A J and the flop comes 8d Jd 3s, I should be raising any bet right? Or should I just call for pot control and evaluate on the turn? There are a lot of cards that beat me on the turn, a Q, K, possibly any diamond.

I'm almost sure that a raise here is the right play, but I'm running pretty bad right now and think a big leak is that I maybe overplaying hands while I'm ahead against opponents who have a million outs against me and are never folding. I've already moved down a level and am getting killed at a level that I used to kill at.

Is it possible to overplay hands that you are ahead in? I'm thinking on this flop I could call the bet to get the most value out of K J, Q J, J 10, smaller pocket pairs, etc. I give opponent a look at the turn if he has a flush draw sure, but I can make a bet on the turn if the flush misses and get called 75% of the time. Really raising the flop probably costs me value because it folds out tpwk so much of the time. Players at microstakes are so much more willing to stack off with draws than they are with marginal made hands.

My goal here should be to win the most money possible when ahead and lose the least amount when behind right? Not just to win the hand more frequently. So a call is probably a decent move here, right?

I'm going to start calling this a higher percentage of the time I think. I should be good enough to get away from my hand when I'm beat on later streets, but get as much value as possible out of my hand when I'm ahead.

I'm running so bad.