So I met a guy at the card room who invited me to his home game.

The table is 9 handed and young, all early to mid 20s except me and the host who are mid 30s. Everyone can clearly play a bit (chatting to a guy at the end of the night, I find out that I have basically been invited to the shark nest, everyone plays live cash everyday for hours, all know each other well, and I have obviously been invited as meat to feed them, nice spot).

I've been there a couple of hours and am up about 20bb. No showdows. A couple of people at the table are telling me to loosen up, which with hindsight fits with me being their dinner plans, but I haven't taken it seriously and have stuck to the plan.

V seems to be the best player at the table. He had a lot of chips when I arrived, and even more now after a pretty sick hand where he raised a 4bb bet to 24bb on K64ss four way IP, called a !3 to 48, called turn, and taaaaaaaaaank called river shove with 88, winning a 400+bb pot against 96ss. I guess he had a read.
Another hand he flatted a donk IP on AQx, flat again turn A, and folded river when the undercard paired. He folded QQ and the villain showed JTo for lols. I felt turn was an easy raise for value against Ax, but noted that he was capable of slow playing monsters.

Two limps to me in MP and I raise black 99 6x
Cutoff calls, V calls on button, two other callers to flop of

467

Check check and I fire 18 into 25

Fold to villain who raises to 54

Folded to me and I pretty much snap folded.

For discussion:
Any thoughts welcome.
potential flop lines.. As nothing seems that great here.
In your opinion, would it change much if we held black aces instead of 9s?

Thanks all

doesn't change that much, would probably peel one and play in position

He's on button, I'm mid pos. 220 effective

I'm more likely to take AA further in the hand. Especially if it's black, not blocking the nfd.

I'm still peeling 99 all day. Way too many semi bluffs and pure bluffs in his range to give up so easily imo. Most overpairs should've 3 bet pre, so all we worry about are the rando hands that crushed the board.

Not sure whether flop is a check/call or a bet/fold. Five way, your 99's just aren't that strong. There are plenty of set and two pair possibility as well as draws.

Betting seems sub-optimal against good players b/c it is obvious hero doesn't have 2pair+. On the other hand, your hand is probably best, and I hate to give four V's a free card on such a draw heavy board. Check/calling probably best, but I hate doing it.

AP, fold. Five way. Two to act. Just ahead or way behind and quite deep.

Is he not going to easily put us on one pair and hammer us to pieces on turns and rivers tho? He also has all the scare cards to work with.

I couldn't see any plan for the hand, so I folded.

I thought aces was interesting as we have more equity against kq etc... Still a fairly unpleasant spot tho and I'd probably still give it to him until I've played with him a fair bit more.

You snap folded? That's not good you should have flatted and seen another card at minimum.

Oop without a plan, and with exactly one good turn card for us, is that really the way forward? I'm not rejecting your advice, just looking to understand. What's your plan for the hand?

I see where you're coming from and agree from that perspective. If you don't have at least an ok idea of when our Vil will continue to fire 2 to 3 streets on a bluff than dumping the hand is ok for now, but probably not on a long term basis.

I guess this is probably style dependant as well. For me, if I cbet this board 99 is not at the bottom of my range, so when I get played back on this board I'm basically going to fold over cards that I cbet light and continue with most pairs and draws. I don't want it to be so easy for him to steal our equity, he just seems like he's going to be a little too light too often to give up right away. Admittedly that might be a little more for meta game purposes than just because I think this hand is definitely too good to ever fold here.

I'll generally operate under the assumption in this spot that a thinking Vil will not fire 3 streets bad against me as I'm a little sticky in some spots, so unless the turn is some disaster card like the 5h where we now ONLY beat bluffs I'm going to float or bluff catch either the turn or the river, and very uncommonly lose two further streets. That does require an idea of how to play the slightly better turn cards for our hand, such as off suit A-Ts; but like I said, if those ones are going to be troubling than probably just fold to raise, or check flop and evaluate turn to preserve your equity

This is the problem against this V given hero's image. If hero calls 54 bb's, hero needs to be at least ready to call the full 220 bb's. I don't want to do that on a five way flop of this texture. Moreover, the first two limpers pose potential problems both for hero and for V. V may not be coming over the top quite as light as we think.

Yes, there are tons of draws in V's range. There is a real good chance he may be semi-bluffing, but I think this is one hero just needs to let go.

This may sound simplistic, but perhaps part of the solution on this hand is raising more pre. Lower SPR's and fewer to the flop might have allowed hero to call down profitably.

as played I'm pretty fine with the fold, without more history it's just not a good spot. I posted the hand because i was looking for a better line... I guess leaning towards c/c evaluate turn?

... And because with the tighter range I am playing in full ring live poker I need to develop a plan on flops like this. Thanks for the feedback all

I've been known to check this kind of hand on this kind of flop. That is, admittedly, a bit of a fancy play and requires the ability to predict what hands will produce what action for various turn cards, so I don't recommend it if you can't figure out why it might be a good idea.

I pretty much agree with all that you've said here OP, particularly the fact that the villain will likely be able to pretty much nail your hand and do what he likes to you on the T/R.

I think you can more-or-less setmine 99 profitably in most live games, just a shame that you only found out at the end of the night that you were swimming with sharks