Last time we talked about the problem that kings face against flopped aces. Queens face the same problem, only more so, for they have to fear both aces and kings on the flop. Still, queens are a premium pair, and you really want to be raising with them, especially to drive out those someone holding a king. Your preflop raise might not drive out A-J, but it should certainly send K-J to the muck. (If your foes don't fold K-J, by the way, so much the better: that says you're in a loose, cally game where you should be able to do quite well.) Thus, if you raise preflop, you narrow your post-flop concerns to aces much less so than kings. With queens, like other big pairs, then, raise preflop to protect your pair.
If your enemies just call along, play your queens like you play the other big pairs, hoping that the flop comes little and uncoordinated so you can bet again and either win the pot outright, or trap top/top, or get other lesser hands to make chasey mistakes.
But let's contemplate a different circumstance. Suppose you get reraised.
If you were holding aces, this would not be a problem. You'd reraise as fast as you could. Kings, pretty much the same thing, though if an extraordinarily tight player raised, you might pause to consider whether he could have aces -- the only hand that could presently beat you. But when queens get reraised, they face a wider range of threatening hands. Your foes could have A-A or K-K, in which case your queens are a 4-1 underdog. It's more likely, though, that they have A-K, big slick, because:
1) big slick is more common than A-A or K-K
2) people love to reraise with big slick.
While your queens are a slight favorite against A-K, you're basically in a coin flip situation, and before you reraise all in you have to ask yourself whether you want to gamble your stack on a coin flip. In cash games you can, because if you go broke you can always go back in your pocket. In tournaments, you have to think twice, especially if you're putting your tournament life on the line. Mostly with queens if you get reraised, just call, take the flop, and hope it comes acefree and king-free, which two thirds of the time it will. Then bet, and hope you haven't run into pocket aces or pocket kings.
With big pairs, your decision making becomes increasingly complex as the size of your big pair descends. Queens are much more vulnerable than aces or kings, a fact that many players don't stop to contemplate. They rate aces as great, kings almost as good as aces, and queens almost as good as kings. By this (il)logic, pocket deuces are almost as good as pocket rockets, and we can see what gogglebox nonsense that is.
So don't get carried away with queens. Yes, they're a premium pair, and yes, they'll play profitably most of the time. But they hate kings on the flop, and they especially hate aces on the flop. Raise to protect them, but be prepared to ditch them if the flop comes rough for your hand.
