You see it all the time in low stakes games. Bunch of people limp around, then some guy with 88 makes a super small raise to "pump up the pot" in case he hits a set. Intuitively it feels right, but a play like this makes no mathematical sense, right? Your expected value is the same, it's just a bigger pot. Or is it? In a very multiway pot, you're much more likely to stack someone with top pair when the SPR is lower than if it were just limped, aren't you? Is there merit to this? At least in a softer game where players maybe aren't as cautious as they should be about putting a lot of money in postflop without a very strong hand in heavily multiway pots?

i can assume that people will react differently to different sprs and might make more or less mistakes but... meh... bigger problem is the lack of balance in your game... and the loss of ev.
building the pot so you might hopefully win a bigger pot is not as efficent as denying equity. you could instead make a real big raise and take the pot down now. or when having a premium actually charge people for seeing the flop.

Yeah, the min-raisers in a 4-way+ pot are lol.

Just stay the course, often you have the 88 and hit the set.

Nom nom.

If you lack fold equity (i.e. you expect a couple of callers), then you're better off over-limping/checking hands like 88 or 87s. Your iso-range should be tight and weighted towards hands that flop good top pairs and nut draws, since those play best with low SPRs, as you said. e.g. I'd much rather raise AQs and then stack off with TPGK, or the nut flush draw, or 2 overs and a gutshot+BDFD. AQs will flop a hand that is "good enough" to play for stacks pretty often. (It makes top pair about 30% of the time, and then there are all the nut draws it can also have). Although it makes a monster hand when it actually flops a set, 88 doesn't flop that hand often enough to make iso-raising multiway a great idea. It basically hates 85% of flops. In short, if you're frequently playing low SPR pots, you're better off with high cards.

This is false, assuming you are using expected value in the typical way as average profit/loss. While your card equity is independent of bet size, fold equity may change even with a small bet and pot size will definitely affect EV, typically it increases with bet size if card equity is greater than 50% and decrease otherwise, assuming fe is held constant.

Your expected value may be the same or similar in terms of multiples of the preflop bet, but that is not how we keep track of who is winning at poker.

What I've learned in my years of poker is that every bad idea has its place.

Ad absurdum, would you rather have 1 or 9 preflop callers while you hold AA?

Any of the above.

Yeah, you're right. Expected value goes up in absolute dollar terms the bigger the pot is in a +EV spot. That's what I was getting wrong. So that would actually be an argument for doing something like min raising a low pocket pair in a limped multiway pot where your expressed+implied odds make playing the hand +EV. Plus, as I mentioned before, you're more likely to stack someone with just top pair in a lower SPR pot. The problem though, it seems, is that the min raise both defines your hand and opens you up to being reraised either by a stealer or someone who had limp-raise intentions.

That's a different problem than the theoretical one you posed in your OP, though. The answer is going to depend on game conditions (including stack depth).

Right

Bigger pots pre = bigger bets post = Decisions are harder = edges are greater