Just sat down and bought in for $200. The casino makes you post which I did on the CO. I have no read as I never played with any of these villains. The villains are in small blind, UTG (kind of irrelevant) and middle position. All villains are white, small blind is young, UTG and middle position are older gentlemen and the middle position is wearing sunglasses. They all have me covered. The villain in middle position have around $500 and the rest around $300.

UTG and middle position limp. I check my option with 94 (after posting straddle), small blind completes, big blind checks. 5 way to the flop.
(flop $10)
8jQ

Small blind leads for $10, big blind folds, UTG calls, middle position calls, and I decide to call with my gutter and backdoor FD (I know I should fold, but I was closing the action and it's first hand of poker I played in a while. And I know this is still not enough justification to call.)

(turn $50)
10
So we hit our straight! Small blind bets again for $25, UTG folds, middle position call and I call. First question, should I raise here? If so, how much? And should I fold to re-raise?

(river $125)
2
So I hit my backdoor flush. Small blind bets yet again for $50, middle position instantly raises to $125 using his green chips. Hero? Is this an easy fold?

This is an easy jam given your stack size. Most flushes that beat you would have raised preflop or folded the flop, unless like every suited queen is being limped. You could get looked up by a bare 9 and definitely k9 since it's so little for mp to call your bet.

Gotta get the money in

Why in the world do you just call when 2 people in front of you are putting money in on the turn? What do you think they have? One probably has the 9 the other has clubs... I am raising to $100 OTT and slam dunk jamming when the club hits the river.

I think they can have two pair, sets, straight to the Q (rarely the nut straight or second nut straight) and a FD (like Kxcc). I know I should have raised the turn. But as played, should I still raise the river. What does the middle position represent other than a flush (I have the 4th nut flush) with a call/call/raise line?

Fold flop; raise turn; shove river.

Ship it. What FD can he have that a) limps, b), calls on that flop, and c) calls on that turn? Not AcKc. Not AcQc. Not any clubs w 9c. Most of the limping suited clubs range simply abandons on the flop.

OP, I don't mean for any of the following to come across rudely, but I bring this up for the mere point of helping you with your game.

The flop call is bad. You said so yourself. As for the river, raise or do whatever you feel like. Whatever. But you need to spend some time talking about your action on the flop.

It's more than KNOWING it's bad. You need to ACT accordingly next time and fold. You are going to whiff far more often than you will ever bink when you're drawing to ISD and BDFD.

This is a point that has helped my game tremendously. I always knew why I shouldn't make Play XYZ, but it took more time than it should for me to actually make the correct play instead of just shrugging then make the XYZ play anyway.

Another way to look at this is: Say you make the call and miss, so you're down $10. But three hands later you do the same thing, miss, and now you're down $25. Those bad calls add up fast. And bad calls most compound themselves and get us in bad spots which cause us to lose even more, which could have easily been avoided in the first place. And you made this play on your first hand of the session, seemingly when your mind should be most fresh. But it makes me wonder what other blunders you make when you're late in a session.

Again, only trying to help. Good luck.

That's a great point, thanks! But I am more interested in the feedback for the river decision. To me river is a clear fold (as a call/call/raise line on 1-2 usually means strength). But everybody thinks I should shove the river. What do you think about the river decision?

This is not great advice

From a purely robotic standpoint, the flop call was not great. It was not a "blunder" by any stretch of the imagination. The call was 5% of stacks, and in this particular instance, the hero was able to realize all of his implied odds. I agree, in a long-term sense, it's probably a leak, but it's a tiny one.

However, the hero in this case justified the play because 1) He was closing the action and 2) He had not played poker in a long time, and this was his first hand.

Granted, neither of those arguments are very sound when it comes to cold poker calculations and EV, however there are definitely intangibles at play here.

Go re-read the OP. He knows what he was doing is wrong. He knows why it's wrong. He knows what the correct decision should be. But he felt more *comfortable* making the looser, gamble play. He probably makes enough money that he can shrug off $10.

It's possible that making that one tiny loose play helped him set a more comfortable tone for the session. Getting active early can make it easier to be patient later. Making the cold, calculated, technically sound fold over and over again could lead to impatient tilt, causing the hero to spew off even more chips in a less marginal spot.

The point is, it's extremely important to play within your comfort zone, especially when playing live, and even more especially when you haven't played in a long time.

It's pretty clear that the OP made this play to "shake off the rust", which is perfectly legitimate. If it helps him play better on every subsequent hand, then it's fine, and very low risk, place to gamble it up.

But it didn't help him play better. He hit his four-outer on the turn and just called when he should have been prepared to gii, and then he hit his flush and thinks he should fold for 100 bb.

It's fine to make that bad call once in a while for whatever reason, but when you hit, you need to jump on it. If you are not going to take advantage of hitting your gamble hand, you should always fold.

And, yes, OP, you should have raised the turn to ~$100 and you should not fold the river.

You don't know that it didn't help him play better. We know nothing about other hands during the rest of the session. There are a lot of hypotheticals, so I'm not looking to get into the what-ifs. All I'm saying is that micro-managing EV, and ignoring the human factor, and forcing yourself to play outside of your comfort zone is bad news.

Also, the play on the turn is fine. Raising after calling two streets when the 4-straight hits the board, on your first hand of the night, is pretty much playing your hand face-up. How do you go from a bet of $25 to playing for stacks, in one street, and still get called by a worse hand? Someone please explain that?

Flatting the turn leaves $125 in the pot and we have about $160 left. Both villains have to act on the river before we do. If one of them bets, we have a pot-sized shove, if one of them doesn't bet, then they didn't have anything that would pay you off anyway. If it checks to you, value bet $90 and hope for the best.

OP, did playing this hand, this way, help you? It would have tilted me

I definitely don't have a habit of that type of flop call, so it probably would not make me tilt after calling the $10 flop bet knowing that I would fold on a lot of turn cards.

I still think I should have raised the turn. The only hand we are in terrible shape against is AK (which I discount because of no pre flop raise and flop call). We are free-rolling against any other T9, have decent odds (although behind) against K9 and AK. Furthermore, we want to charge flush draws (AQ, Q8 or any two random clubs), sets and two pairs. So I think raise to ~$100 is a good option.

When the river is another club, why does the middle position raise? Don't you think he would raise K9 or AK on the turn? (for value against smaller straights and to charge flush draws, sets and two pairs) Why can't he have AQ or a slow-played AK? or a hand like Q8 or A8? What do we expect to get called by if we raise the river?

FWIW, I tank called and the small blind over called with T9 (flopped straight). The middle position turned over A7!