Game is $1/$2.

Villain 1: A whale. For the last 30 min has been opening 90% of hands anywhere from $10-$30. He is also 3betting 50% of the time from $30-$50 depending on the open. His stack is approximately $800 mainly because he was involved in a three way all in with 63o vs 77 vs 55 on a 754 board. He is in the cutoff for this hand.

Villain 2: Immediately to my left. TAG has around $600. Haven't seen him play many hands. He, and most of the table has started to play pretty face up given the whale and are all gunning for him and not really getting out of line. He is UTG+1 for this hand.

Villain 3: He was the dude that had 55 against villain 1 about an orbit before this hand. He doesn't seem tilted. He is playing loose passive and trying to be involved in every pot with Villain 1 since that hand. He has around $150. He is UTG+3 for this hand.

Hero. Stack is around $450, mainly from Villain 1. They probably view me as a TAG. Although, since whale sat down I think everyone is just trying to trap him and not paying attention to anyone else.

On to the hand.

Hero picks up 9c9s UTG and limps. This would normally be a raise for me, but since villain has a high 3bet, and we are deep, I don't feel like bloating the pot and playing 99 OOP. Open to comments if you play it differently.

6 players limp. Whale makes it $12. Button and Blinds Fold. I call. Villain 2 calls. Villain 3 calls. 2 others call. Hero checks dark.

Flop ($60). KdTd9h. Villain 2 bets $30. Villain 3 calls $30. everyone else folds. Hero?

I would often limp/RR to iso the whale here, though others may have that idea too, so I don't hate the limp/flat.

Never/ever checking dark. What is your perceived advantage in doing that? Now you have to either c/c down giving draws a great price and not getting much value from TP/2p, or effectively turn a set in to a bluff by check/raising, when you could have bet for value and got draws/TP+ paying you all day.

AP, JQ likely bets bigger on this board, so we're almost always ahead, but we hate a ton of cards. We have to c/r, even though it loses us a ton of hands we want value from. Pot is $150 with your call. Make it at least $90 more ($120 total). Then punch yourself in the nuts for checking dark.

Pre seems fine to me.

OTF I don't like checking dark - just always seemed silly to me - but having said that, I might have gone for a c/r on this hand anyway. You want to give V1 a chance to get aggressive, and we wouldn't likely have folded any draw. Obviously the bet from V1 looks more serious - but we are likely still ahead and vulnerable. I'd go ahead and but in the c/r... i disagree that 2p will fold and even a lot of fds and combos may stick around.

Excellent points on checking dark. In hindsight, its so stupid. Makes no sense.

Question: If you make it $90-$120 can you comfortably call a shove from v2?

This is the question that was running through my mind and I just ended up calling. I kind of hate this line though thinking about it now.

Turn: ($150) [KdTd9h]4d. Here checks. V2 now checks. V3 now shoves for $98 total. Hero?

Checking dark just sacrifices our options with little benefit. In this case it actually works out we have a beautiful opportunity to actually capitalize on the dark check and put in a raise and we just flat a super wet board where v could easily have draws or a made hand that puts us on a draw. So we've sorta compounded the badness with more badness imo. You have to raise flop there IMO.

And yeah I'm raise Gii there always.

So now ott getting 2.5:1 we are actually slightly priced out of drawing to our boat/quads if we assume v has a flush. Now if we think whale always calls I guess we can conjure up enough equity with the little remaining implied odds to justify a call here. But it's fairly ugly now.

Of course v3 has some small amount of spazz... may be shipping some AdXx or whatever. So it's hard to fold here but we really shouldn't be in a spot anywhere near this close here IMO.