Just gonna give the flop action to start, cause I think the rest of it will bias answers.

Original raiser is a tight player, he's a grinder, he can kinda read hands and I'm guessing eeks out a bit of a profit by value towning fish and playing tight.

Other villain is an old man, he's been opening to $50 randomly, I saw him play a hand where he bet $50 into $25 on J74 rainbow, check/called $75 on the turn, and then won at showdown with J8 vs J2. We're $1000 effective with him.

Tight player opens in EP to $20 with $700 behind, one caller to me in CO, I flat 87, old guy calls in the SB

Flop: Q75 ($80)
Old guy leads $40, tight player calls, other player folds, I make it $160...
I'm planning on firing OTT with a sizing that threatens stacks OTR, depending on which player calls me and what the turn actually is.

I like it.

I like the creativity but I’m not super excited to be pulling a move against an old guy donking flop and a tight player who opened in EP then called a flop bet.

I don’t hate it but I’d rather not have a 7 here and perhaps choose a hand with a little more equity-if-called (gutter, BDFD, etc).

Flop raise seems bad (especially into 2 tight players). Don't hate a call if we think we can outplay opponent and still rep straights with our 8 blocker.

Agree. Not sure we why we are choosing this hand to put into our bluffing range. Especially against a player described as donking top pair no kicker hands and then taking them to showdown.

A hand like KJs with back door FD would be a much better bluffing candidate.

huh? A hand with way less equity to the pot and is potentially dominated by KQ/QJ is better?

KJs would be the nut low hand

Perhaps I’m mistaken. I figured having a potentially live over and better back door equity would be preferable. I guess it would have made more sense to say having a one of our suit on board as it allows for better turn barrelling candidates. I just don’t see middle pair as a typical bluff hand. Can you explain why this is a good spot to bluff and what the realistic bluff targets are?

Unless someone has a set here, having a 7 does in fact give us 5 outs against top pair. The greater concern would be if someone has 64 and then our 8 will be costly. But I am not too worried about that here, especially since we are raising and not calling.

Plus we block one of the sets. This is not a terrible hand to make a move with. I still would not do it against this action, but if we want to ever do it, maybe we should wait for a backdoor flush draw but otherwise this isn’t really a bad hand for it.

OP, are you a R&M fan or is the thread title a coincidence?

Rick and Morty fan. I just love getting people off top pair!

Don’t like it. You are repping too thin at this point and you still have position. Why not peel a turn and have more options.

It's a big no for me. It's multiway pot against a donk and a call with a marginal blocker and very few outs to improve.

Old man could have set plus Jx while original raiser has sets, TPTK and overpairs.

Honestly I’d just fold flop, though if you were heads up it’s prob not the worst if you think the old man can lay down top pair…also blasted a stack off the other day trying to get a vip to fold top pair so in no position to call it bad…

Trying to get LLSNL players to fold TP on a bluff is a good way to lose money. They hem and hah for 5 minutes, then say, "I got to see it" and call.

Tight player in EP doesn't have a ceiling in his flop calling range on such dry board.

Sure the bluff will work some of the times, but trying to end this hand on the flop seems -EV to me.

At $700 effective, what was your plan on the turn and river?

Agree, especially someone who won't fold J8.

Also, how tight and in what way is other player tight? Will he ever fold AQ or better?

How tight or more like how bad?

What exactly can hero represent in this spot given the preflop action and position?

Sets are not raising this flop, so 75, Q5, Q7?

If hero is routinely showing up with those combinations of hands, hero's image is pretty trash. Trash image will get called light as they should, depending on the quality of opponent.

If hero isn't routinely showing up with those hands, then it should be even more obvious to a competent player that hero doesn't have much.

It's a pretty crappy board texture to rep anything, so unless you got other reads or context, this is a silly spot. And if these spots are where you find yourself often, good luck beating the game.

I am much less likely to do this heads up, having two opponents in the hand makes our raise look a lot stronger

I believe you are mistaken, KJ blocks hands we want villains to have (KQ, QJ). Middle pair is a fairly common low % solver bluff, cause it blocks sets, has five outs vs top pair / overpair (vs KJ which has 0-3 outs vs TP/overpair). You're definitely correct that it is much better to do this with a BDFD, and since we don't want to be doing this 100% of the time with this combo, using only middle pair with BDFD is a good adjustment.

definitely a decent option, to peel to turn and use our position. Just gotta remember that we're doing it to bluff future streets, and not cause we like our pair of 7s.

god, I wish this was the case in my casino. too many nits

sets shouldn't be raising this flop, which is not the same thing as them not raising this flop (and I'm not even sure that that is true, that sets don't raise this flop at any %, but I don't have access to a multi way solver).
No one is putting hero on Q7s or Q5s, maybe 57s, maybe 68s, maybe 89s.

I like raising this board specifically because it reps so little, and there are so few draws... unless you have an aggro/spazzy image, people tend to respect raises a lot on boards where you can't have many semi bluffs, and this board definitely qualifies as that.

Thanks for the wishes of luck with beating the game, I'm at $57/hour over 1200 hours in 2/5, so I think I'm likely to be a winner even if my sample size is too small to know how much of one. My post history is FILLED with hands like this - not cause they are how I play all the time, but because I like to push my limits of comfort and find new spots to gain a bit of extra EV. It definitely costs me money sometimes, but I don't play poker for the money, I play for the challenge and cause I love strategy games.

You know the sort of 2/5 player who plays a good range preflop, goes for at most two streets with top pair top kicker, doesn't get creative, and protects their stack a bunch even if it costs them an edge in some spots? He's that sort of player.

Makes no sense. So people fold even though you can't rep anything, and they fold out of respect to what?

And like I said, if you could show up with 75 in a raised pot against a tight player, you likely have a pretty loose image.

Competent players can read the raise for what it is pretty easily. Average players probably can't. Plus a competent player doesn't have a ceiling with his calling range in this spot, something that you don't even seem to consider.

Overall, this spot could make sense, but a lot depends on the ability of your opponent(s). I know nothing of them, so I can't say with any degree of confidence.

But in my pool, anyone who routinely put in big money in scenarios like these would be a spot for me. That's just my 2 cents.

Congratulation on finding a soft player pool.

I think the main point of confusion to most responders here is the fact that you want to unblock KQ/JQ hands and target them for bluffs against a V who you just told a story about being sticky with TP no kicker.

It's fine if you know v can lay down top pair. Nothing more to discuss really. Vs some players it's a good play but vs others it's lighting money on fire.

In a vacuum it's a good hand to do it with. We block middle set and have decent equity when called almost always but this is so player dependent that I don't think a forum can give you better answers than you can yourself

You know these guys better than we do, so I guess you just have to go with your reads. There is no point raising here vs players who can't fold AQ+ in this spot (or even KQ/QJ/QT given the J8 hand).

If they'll fold those, it's a great play, but you are not repping much. I can't imagine raising a set on this board vs. these guys (I wouldn't), so what do you have? AQ? Of course, maybe they aren't good enough to realize that -- again you know better than we.

Very fair responses
Results:

Where do you play?

lol

You might not be aware how bad this hand is.

You're just putting on a little show for yourself with a 'gonna win all the pots I want against these clowns' mindset. It's just the nut low concept to apply against these two. I'm not even talking about how the hand fits in a range/strategy, that's another story entirely - I'm really talking about how you're robbing yourself of cash with this line because of the thought process you chose. Posting about it after the session is a massive leak too, but maybe you'll be rewarded if you can understand what I'm talking about... Imagine if the concept was 'I can call down to 87hh here bc the old fish has QT+ and the tight guy between us might have an OP and less QQ by way of the fish donk, so I can bleed them both on on 8,7 turns while IP here. ... instead you just made them fold those hands and hoped to work in some FE on any turn. Concept fail.