Set of Aces or Small set?

would you rather flop a set of Aces while holding AA as your hole cards or would you rather flop a set of 8's when your hole cards are 88? and the reason I ask this is because that Ace on the flop is a scare card and unless your opponent holds that A he may be reluctant to bet into you or to call your bet even if he hits his card :Example: lets say you hold AA vs KJ and the flop comes A-J-4 rainbow you have a monster and only a couple drawing hands but even tho he has mid pair with top kicker he's afraid of that ace... 2nd example : you hold 88 vs KJ and the flop comes J-8-2 rainbow, well now you still have a big hand and your opponent has top pair with a K kicker and is more likely to fire into you and seems like mid-small sets are more likely to get paid of then AAA. (OFC all situations vary) What is your thoughts about this?

I would say it's definitely better two have small set as your opponent can almost never put you on a set when the flop comes for example. A-8-5 and he has AK and you have 55 your going to paid off here a lot (depending on the way you play it). With your example of AA the only way to get value is really by slowplaying.

Its definitely nice when you flop a smaller set because they may not expect it, especially if they have like two pair or TPTK. Although, you will definitely lose big money if it is a set over set situation and there are no sort of draws on the board that help you get away from the hand. It doesnt happen often, but it does happen and when it does, its not good xD

thinks this depends on stack depth the -deeper the more you may want the aces

Seems like kind of an incomplete analysis. For one thing, you don't take into account that when you hold the 88, there are 4 aces that can come on the flop vs only 2 when you hold AA.

TeUnit said:

thinks this depends on stack depth the -deeper the more you may want the aces

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I was going to say just this. When you're effectively 250+bb deep against someone with half a clue, you're not going to get stacks in the middle unless you both have strong hands. In that case, you want the AA because you're going to be on the right side of set-over-set situations.

Obviously these situations aren't going to happen every time, but I've run into my fair share that I've learned to be very careful about analyzing each street against an opponent's range, especially when I have the bottom or middle set on a 3-bet type board. When deep, a set of Jacks on a K-J-3 flop, facing a lot of action is much more likely up against KK than 33.

This does not apply to droolers or 2nl-5nl. But 25nl+, you'll need to have an idea of how well your opponent plays deep, and if they're reevaluating relative hand strengths down appropriately based on stacks. In any case, when you have a set of Aces, it's much easier to play when deep than when you're sitting there with a set of 8s.

when i have pocket aces sometimes i get disapointed when an ace flops cause they are going to assume i have a strong ace and fold, so i like low sets better. nothing worse than set over set so if you got the low set you will lose alot of money.

if you have AA, the best scenario you can hope for is either to flop a boat like A JJ flop and hope you openent has JT, KJ, QJ or something like that or has pocket pair and you have the even greater hold'em nightmare set over set and stack'em. Personally, I always prefer to have top set as only an opponent with suited connecters has any type of draw to hit runner runner. otherwise, you're just going to stack them

definitley the flopped aces. dont wont to be on the wrong side of two flopped sets.