5 limpers to the flop of 522r

I'm SB with 77 and bet. BB folds, EP who open limped and MP call

3-way (4 BB): Qx
I bet, both call

3-way (7 BB); Qx
EP is an older male who I suspect might be a house player. Logs a ton of hours every month and jumps between different games. I'd say he's semi competent. MP is a typical 8/16 fish.

Best play?

Bet/fold

You forgot to raise preflop.

Bet/fold river. This card changes nothing, and a 5 or 33 or whatever is calling you all day.

I read this as the flop was 5-handed, which means 3 limpers to SB. I wouldn't raise 77 preflop from SB in that situation. I don't think it's terrible (I'd raise 99 here all day long and I'd sometimes raise 88), but it's a bit loose for me because you're generally going to be having a tough time realizing that little bit of equity edge you've got.

Bet seems to be targeting such narrow value from ep. What worse hands call, a5/66? does he limp a lot of medium-big pairs?

I don't like bet/fold so check.

jdr, I'm still struggling with raising this hand pre in this spot because I feel postflop is going to be so hard to play oop MW unless I flop a set or something like 322 or 865. I might have the best hand pre but its playability is not so great. Even if I get the 322 flop and bet, I expect everyone would correctly call for better than 11:1 and I won't where I'm at on most turns and rivers. What are your thoughts?

bolded is correct.

And do you prefer bet or check otr? If check, would you call a bet from either player?

Against two players, I bet. The chances of someone bluffing here go down because it's a multiway pot, but you can get called by A-high and other pocket pairs.

Easy fold if raised. If someone bluff-raises in this spot, they've earned their money.

up to what pp you advocate to bet/fold?

I don't know. As I said, with 99 I'm raising preflop, and that changes the feel of the hand and the size of the pot. Add 2 BB preflop and the pot is over 20% larger to start the river. That's pretty significant. The reason I'm more okay with a bet-fold in a smaller pot is because opponent's risk/reward for bluffing is worse.

Do bad players think about that? Probably not, but maybe. However, it doesn't matter what they think or fail to think. We can model them as bluffing X% of the time. We may not know what X is, but the bigger the pot is the more likely it is that calling is the correct counter-strategy.

So because of the increased pot size (assuming I raised preflop), I'm more inclined to want to show it down. Whether I'll bet/call or check/call will probably depend on what I think of the opponents at the table. If I feel like get raised here basically never, I'll go ahead and bet it (and hate life if raised, but pay it off). If there's some reason to believe that my opponents are a little more aggressive, I'll check-call.

What I imagine when I think of a typical 8/16 table is that this would be a bet/call. A river raise here would surprise me quite a bit.

Going downward in hand size, I probably bet/fold 66. I'm probably checking with 33/44 in this spot because now I'm not value betting against hands like 5x. It's probably check-fold at that point, but I might be persuaded into a check-call.

Edit: If you know your table, I don't mind bet/folding even with bigger pairs and raising preflop. But this is dependent upon table conditions and not something I would do as the default.

I raise this pre just often enough, which isn't often, in order to mix things up a bit. OTR I'd check/call one player which would hopefully be the last to act.

In the 8/16 games I'm accustomed to I bet intending to fold but then talk myself into a call.

You've got plenty of company.

I don't bet/fold this without a read. It's usually a bet/call, and I've won pots where I got raised by ace high or a smaller pair in these situations. But if I don't want to bet/call, i prefer x/call to bet-folding this strong a hand.

hm, this I don't get. You'll have to explain how you're viewing his range

Given the passive action, it's unlikely our opponents have ranges heavy in big pocket pairs so we're not at great risk to be valuetowning ourselves ... probably just 88 and sometimes 99. No draws to speak of so nothing to induce. Seems we should expect to face a great deal of Ah, which will call and rarely bluff raise a double paired board.

seems clear b/f is best. b/c is probably very bad without a read. since checking is inferior for value, the only alternate line is c/f which is unjustifiable given the villain' passive lines