vulnerable to snakes in the weeds

I find myself getting eliminated a lot when I push strong hands and get trapped by opponents slowplaying a monster hand. Any advice?

How do you define "moderate hand" and "big hand?"

Since every situation is so very different, I suggest posting some hands where you ran into this in the hand analysis section. I'd postulate that there is something else that you are doing that you might not be aware of that's leading you into these traps.

Not betting enough PF / on the flop, and over valuing hands are 2 common mistakes.

If you're making decent-sized bets and your opponent keeps flat calling, there's several explanations for it.

1) He's a weak player and is calling with a losing hand
2) He's drawing to a big hand
3) He has a hand that he thinks is winning, but it's weaker than your hand
4) He's trapping with a made hand

I think the key is patience. I know the blinds keep going up in tourneys, and you've been waiting for that pocket pair for an hour in a ring game, but you can't expect to double-up every time you hit a hand. The trick is to bet enough so that your opponent isn't getting the odds to draw to a hand that will beat you, but not so much that you're left crippled when he either hits his draw or was trapping to begin with.

Also, if you're over-aggressive you'll not only get trapped, but you'll also drive out some of your action that would've stayed in with a weak hand to a weaker bet. And make sure you take note of the players who trapped you with monsters in the past. I find some people online will slow-play absolutely anything.

You might also want to do a Google search for "Small Ball Poker". You may not want to adopt the technique, but it'll give you a good example of a winning strategy with very little risk.

Do you C-Bet a lot? I used to fall victim to this walking into bear traps. I have learned to not just automatically c-bet everytime because you will start giving reverse implied odds. Also like state previously calling is suspicious. You have to watch for it and try to figure if they are a good player and they are calling it is not good, if they are a weak player bet away.