Midwest casino, 9 handed

Hero has 77 OTB with (~$250)

UTG+1 limps. MP limps. Folds to Hero OTB.

MP (~$225) is Slightly LAG, but a bit more so post-flop. MP is Villain from the 88 hand - Here in which Hero checked behind and Villain won with J4o. MP likely views Hero as TAG, but prone to post-flop mistakes/over-valuing hands (guy sitting next to him was Villain in the QQ hand I posted See Here and they seem to know each other).

Hero raises to 12. Blinds call. Limpers call.

Flop K 9 7 Pot is ~$60.

UTG+ checks. MP bets $45. Hero ?

I'm calling and hoping he leads turn

Seems like a trivial flat call. MP is closing in on commitment territory, our hand is mega strong, and we should encourage players behind to get involved with weak made hands/draws as well.

Raising gives your 4 opponents a chance to get off the hook for free/cheap IMO.

I mostly just overlimp here preflop although there are certainly arguments for raising. Although as I discussed in another thread of yours, if you're noobish to NL you may want to lean to keeping pots small preflop (which will help limit the magnitude of your overall mistakes).

One of the biggest reasons to raise a hand like 77 preflop that will likely result in a multiway pot (which a lotta raised pots in a typical LLSNL game will be) is to make it easier to get in stacks postflop if we hit. If we hadda limped, the SPR would be 17, which would make it difficult to get in stacks postflop. Here we have an SPR of 4 where it will be trivial to get in stacks. Although that's not necessarily reason enough for raising to be better preflop.

Anyhoo, board is fairly drawless, so we could do bets of just over 1/2 PSB to setup a reasonable river shove. Although I usually find in these cases that the board will often run out scary enough where we sometimes won't feel as comfortable getting in stacks. If that is the case, then you're probably better off PSBing the flop to setup a turn shove. Either is fine, imo.

Ha, now I realize we've been donked into. With the board not being drawy, I would typically just flat here. We're fine with others coming along on this drawless board, we don't want to scare away mediocre hands that are drawing ~dead, and we can still trivially play for stacks whenever we want on later streets (especially in position).

GcluelessNLnoobG

I'm not a fan of slow-playing sets, but this is the perfect spot to do it. Flat.

Grunching:

Pre: I like the raise, but I would have liked to size down to $10 to optimize SPR's for set-mining, and you want to go as multi-way as possible. If table dynamics dictate that you would give away what you have or possibly induce, then I like the $12.

Flop: Call. Not too many draws on the board. Your perceived range should be pretty wide given the fact that you raised from the button. On the turn, he may bet again with K-x or call your bet. Also he very well may bink two pair that he will felt with. No need to blow him off his hand now.

So, while there's 99 and 77 in my range here, I'm mostly going to have Kx hands (and probably not K7). I know narrowing his range to mainly JT is too restrictive, but that does seem to make the most sense given board texture/action. Are we okay flatting with that possibility out there?

I think shows up tons more K-x: KJ, K10, and random K-x suited. For crying out loud, he played J4o from MP in the HH. He could have K9o. QJ also not impossible, and at 75bbs deep, you can give him a freebie to fire another barrel with that one.

There is another OESDs as well (T8), but that isn't all he (or others) have. Plus we could still have QQ- and be seeing a turn. But overall even if he binks these we'll still have outs, plus we're still getting in major percentages of our stack as a big fave.

If the board contained a flush draw I think there would be much more argument for a raise (especially since I don't believe hardly anyone folds a flush draw on the flop, although not everyone agrees with that, plus it could easily slowdown later street action).

GcluelessNLnoobG

This is a really easy flat imo.
Hope UTG calls, and that MP bets turn again, then jam any and every turn card.

Sure, he could have JT or T8, but I'm not super concerned with them. I'm much more concerned with maximizing the value we get against Kx hands, from both villain and the other 3 players involved in this hand. We are in position, so we can make certain that the turn gets bet/raised if that's our desire, thus only letting draws see 1 card for the flop price.

Against 4 V's, I'm not flatting.

Put the MP at the top of his range: K9.
One of these knuckleheads will have JT, which is a "traditional" call at 1/3 from almost any position by reg LPs.
God only knows what else the other guys have. But against this field, we have at least 12 cards to fade versus this range. And it could be worse if someone has 86!

I'm making it 100 to go, hoping to get a caller behind and/or maybe induce MP to overjam. Flatting will price in straight draws behind us and I'm not doing it. Perhaps this is nitty and some very good players ITT say flat. But I can't here.

Gutshots are only getting maximum IO of ~8:1 all told if we flat, which is far short of their required ~11:1 (plus ignoring the times we suckout on the river, plus ignores the time they might decide they are committed when hitting a pair on the turn). I ain't concerned at all about 4 outers.

Allowing the OESDs 2.5:1 to see a turn ain't tremendous (since we'll be stacking off every time they hit), but it should still be positive enough when you factor in the times we boat up / make a bunch of money off of hands that are drawing ~dead.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I like a small raise to about $110. If he's got a K or an OESD he's not going anywhere.

We're against 4 players here. The pertinent issue is our odds against the field, not just one hand type. If we price in the field, we're giving up equity. The time to bloat the pot now is when we're ahead and can probably induce a shove from MP.

There are at least 12 cards we don't want to see on the turn that will force us to check. Then we get to run the gauntlet again on the river if we're lucky enough to have it checked through. If the turn bricks, who's calling our turn bet? Probably just MP.

So you end up getting more money into the pot only from MP anyway. The others get to draw cheaply but they're never putting in a penny more ott unless they have us beat!

I'd rather overcharge gamblers with OESD now on this flop and/or get MP to overshove with the worst of it.

^^^^

If I knew for a fact someone was on a OESD, then I'm all for raising the flop (it goes with my thinking that draws are rarely folded on the flop). And yeah, it's possible the world may have a decent amount of outs against us, but even in the worse-ish case we should still have redraws.

Couple of points I definitely don't agree with: (1) I'm never checking any turn card; we has a set with only $190 left in a $150 pot HU and I'm looking to build towards getting the rest in. (2) TP bet/3bets on a dry board for stacks (especially against the preflop raise) almost never; expecting this type of spazz from the donker with a weak hand is overly optimistic, but we can certainly get him to donk off some more by playing weakly in position.

GimoG

Excellent point 2, thanks! I challenge point 1.

We're not HU yet. (2 (maybe 3, op is unclear) checked to MP who bet 45.) If we flat, we almost certainly won't be HU to the turn.

Moreover, by your tactic, limpers/drawers get to call 45 more for a shot at our entire remaining stack of 190 plus the MP's stack (likely) too and a 195+ pot? One of them binks his straight on the turn, jams it in and felts us for 45 additional dollars. Great.

Even nits like you and me are calling 45 dollars here with this prospect with a straight draw getting 9-1 IO on a 6-1 draw. The hand is over if the turn bricks, since we jam to deny more drawing otr. So we take a huge risk to get 45-90 more dollars into the pot.

I know a sure way to get 90 dollars more into the pot - raise! We win 105 now easily if he folds, likely win 90 more if MP calls. Or we can take an absurd risk to win 45-90 more maximum.

bigger pre , 6x+
calling flop is ok, the pot is pretty big already
obv raising small not wrong either

I flat with these stack sizes.

Mostly flatting because of mp description, otherwise bottom set is a fast play for me

If more come along on the flop we'll have <= PSB for the turn. I'm betting it (mostly jamming) every single time.

We're still giving gutshots pretty bad IO by flatting; the only way they'll get remotely close to making a profitable flop call is if they stack multiple people (which rarely happens). Admittedly we're giving OESDs decent odds, but I'm willing to risk that to string along hands that are ~drawing dead which will help make up for that. I'm just not nearly as worried about the trifecta of someone having an OESD + someone hitting their OESD + us not outdrawing them on the river as you are. I'd be much more in the raise camp if there was a flush draw.

Raising is an option and likely EV, but my guess is that it isn't as good as flatting.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Like others have said, this is a very standard flat, even knowing villain frequently has 8 outs

I think it's a very fatalistic mindset to suggest we must raise the flop to force out 8 out straight draws.

LLSNL ranges are so damn wide, how often does someone have one of the 3 hands we're "worried about" (JT/T8/86) versus the times they may have a hand we have utterly crushed that could continue incorrectly against our hand, like gutshots, Kx, 9x?

How certain are we that MP will continue to our raise? How does that compare to the action he may give us later if we only flat the flop?

Will these OESDs we are worried about make a mistake on the turn when they miss, like continuing to a bet when the odds are incorrect? Same question goes for the other hands the field may continue with.

My philosophy on this is pretty simple: LLSNL opponents make mistakes constantly. Give them opportunities to make as many mistakes as possible, for as much money as possible. Raising the flop doesn't set our opponents up to do that, so I'm not too big of an advocate for it. Raising flop "protects our equity" of course, but we have such a massive equity advantage that doing so has the potential to cost us profit against such a large grouping of hands, and we are doing it for a select group of 3 specific hands?

I don't think we are necessarily forcing them out (though it depends on sizing), but getting value from the draws that probably aren't folding for $60-$75 more.

But we aren't sure that they have draws and they are folding almost everything else. MP is a LAG, especially post -- let him hang himself. (It seems as if you know something we don't know yet, though.)