big pots or small pots?

One of the best and most ridiculously simple pieces of poker advice I've ever heard is big hand = big pot, small hand = small pot.

One caveat: I posted a hand in the analysis section recently of a NL10 hand where I raised with A-rag over an out of turn poster, got called by the poster, barreled two streets on a flush draw/raggy board and hero called 60 BB shove on river.

That's rare, but for the most part, I try to avoid playing big pots without big hands. In fact, I feel very uncomfortable. It gets me in trouble in a lot of spots where I end up folding likely the best hand or I miss out on value when a single pair hand because I don't want to barrel off cuz "ZOMG wtf is he calling down with."

Now there's a difference between vbetting thin imo, and playing big pots with marginal hands.

But that's a theme I notice all the time in watching high-stakes players...they are battling each other on every street with air vs. 4th pair etc.

Recently in a live game, the game was breaking and I offered to play this one kid HU for a bit. I've been playing quite a bit of HU but he created a ton of problems for me...1 by blind raising/straddling every hand on button, he would call huge raises with marginal hands and just owned my soul postflop when I wouldn't call like 30-50 BB bets with Ace-high or some mid pair.

So is this a fundamental problem in my game? When it's apparent that everyone's ranges are weak, I try to vbet small to get value from worse hands and also bluff small (since the pot is small) to represent thin value bets or slowplayed monsters (I don't slowplay monsters much, but whatever).

But instead, is it more profitable to play people uncomfortable by making the pot bigger when we both have nothing?

GREAT blog... not sure what the answer is, but I feel very similar!

maybe the answer lies in this;
depending on stakes/ format/ table dynamics/ your opponent, the definition of what constitutes a 'big hand' changes tremendously. Against a calling station, top pair 2nd kicker might be a big hand. Against someone else an unimproved pair of Pocket Aces on a dry board, vs a certain opponent who just re-raised you might not be a big hand.
As far as playing big pots with air vs. another opponent who you suspect has nothing but air, I guess the 1st question is; why do you want to play at that table? If you are playing live and have limited to no table selection and cannot change your seat then my solution would be to stop playing any kind of drawing hand and focus on just pocket pairs, say 77+ and AK/ AQ/ KQ/ AJs. I would look for the right moment and just push back at them. You can't really play suited connectors/ small pairs vs these opponents as they will never give you the price to draw so you need to focus on top pair, overpair or (hopefully) a set and just bet the crap out of your opponent.