NWI NL 1/2
Saturday night, big game. Hero has been up and down all day. We're at about $255 at this point. The game is not wild but filled with stations who love to call raises.
Hero is in the BB with 88
UTG Raises to $20, she's a 2/5 regular who is playing in our 1/2. She's aggro and plays a wide range. She's got about $400
UTG+1 is a rock. He's about 75. He's a classic station. He calls $20. Maybe he has $70 here. Not sure, less than 100 though.
UTG+2 calls. 24 yo Asian I mentioned yesterday. I believe he had $500. I thought he was a good player at first, now I just don't know.
MP calls. He's a tradesman. I don't know him. He called me down with 33s on a low board when I had 10s. He lost about $70 in that heads up pot.
It gets to me with $80 in the pot. I call the $20.
Pot is now $101.
Flop is 552
UTG bets 40 into 101. UTG+1 calls, UTG+2 calls, and MP calls.
The pot is $261 when it comes back to me. I know I am not good here, but should I call 40 to win $261? I complete the action. I know I only have 2 outs though, but what are all these people calling with?

FD'S GS'S naked overs. Slowplaying trips possibly OESD. Small overpair possibly 22. Getting the picture? Bad flop. Your almost never going to get a favourable run out even if 88 is good here. Forget the 6.5-1 Your getting here and fold. Your 23.5-1 to improve. Just burning money imo.

If OR is 10xing with a wide range and getting 3 loose calls, I'm 3balling it pre and feel pretty good about it. If she's positionally aware and/or doesn't mess around with this sizing lightly, then flatting for almost pure setmine is fine.

Flop feels kind of gross (again, assuming OR has a wide range pre). 522 seems like a ship and 744 is an easy fold, but 552 feels like we'll be regretting any of the three decisions a lot. I probably just nitfold, honestly.

Thanks for the feedback. I figured it was a bad call, but the sum of money in the pot (and me completing the action) caused me to call. I'm not used to such big pots and calling for so little but i only got 1 card out of the deal.

I don't say this often, but I actually don't know what the correct preflop action is here. I can see merit to all 3 options:

My first reaction was to think "fold pre, you're not getting the right odds to set mine and your hand plays poorly multiways the times when you miss your set", but after thinking about it more, I actually don't mind calling. The implied odds are so great against these specific kind of players that, despite our unfavourably short effective stacks, it might be +EV to set mine here.

I could also be on board with 3bet squeezing pre. If people have wide ranges, then we can take all the dead money out and often win the pot uncontested. The times when we get called by AJ+ we're flipping. Although the downside is that the callers can easily have 99-QQ here, despite just flatting the raise preflop. So that makes me kind of meh about it.

So yeah, preflop can go either way. I'm not going to criticise that.

As for postflop, this is also a gross spot, but I lean towards either folding or jamming, rather than calling. Part of the reason is that we're not really getting great odds to try to hit our 2 outer against 5x and 99+, which will show up fairly often in this spot. The other part is that we don't have the 8d in our hand, so if someone is on a flush draw (which it's fairly likely that at least 1 player is), then they could have the 8d in their hand which gives us only 1 out. So that makes me dislike calling even more. And the times when we're ahead, we just won't know what to do when the turn comes a Qc (just a random example), so we'll end up folding our equity if we don't boat up.

I think that for the flop: folding > jamming > calling.