1/2 NL
Hero (UTG+2) (~460 covers) (perceived solid balanced (leaning towards loose) image).
V1 (UTG+3) (174) semi-newbie middle aged guy, playing scared & tight, but also somewhat weird and bluff happy after seeing hero pull a couple of standard c-bet takedowns.
V2 (SB) (~220) loose fish who bets when she has it.

Hero dealt 79
Hero opens to 10, V1 calls, V2 calls, BB calls. Pot: $40

Flop: K92
Hero c-bets 20, V1 calls, V2 calls, BB calls. Pot: $120

Turn: 9
V2 leads 20, BB folds, Hero flats, V1 shoves $144, V2 folds. Pot: $304. Hero:?

Honestly that's not much of a read on V1 in terms of being useful to applied strategy.

I think we snap it off here. Price simply too good and V might be spazzing out here trying to steal the pot with an allin.

I think checking the flop might be a bit better, not sure a bet accomplishes very much, the list of hands that both have decent equity against us and will fold is small. Betting is reasonable as well though because the list of downsides to betting is also small.

Is V1 tight pre? What are the chances he shows up with a worse 9? If he has entirely better 9s (discounting K9 and 22 as I think he'd raise flop), your equity in the pot if you call will be $88, so you only lose $36 on the call. Given your huge equity if you have the best hand, you want to be sure you're beaten here north of 90% of the time. I'm not that sure, so I'd be calling.

you hit the best turn card in the deck and you are considering folding against a guy who you said was kind of spazzy and bluff happy against you? To me this seems like a fist pump call, especially for <100BBs

Fold pre
Call and lose to t9

or 98

Fold pre is obvious

Your read is all over the place, it's tough to comment on the turn. This is a call a lot of the time against bluffy players and a fold against the standard ABC tight passive reg.

Or call and beat AA. Too much dumb stuff in play given description, I'd call, but likely wouldn't have this hand here either ever.

I love the raise with 79ss but only if in position against weak/tight limpers. OOP this is a clear fold pre.

As played I think that I'm leaning toward a call for the above mentioned reasons. But I'm not super happy about it. Mostly I think that it is hard to fold the turn when you hit your nut best turn card, and are getting decent odds to call.

Yeah not folding here either, but I can imagine it's not winning much

Well, typically I'm tight and fold this, but this was a super juicy game filled with limpers who fold to a good sized bet. Therefore, typical moneymaking hands were just getting folded to a lot. So, I was changing up my game to suit the table, and really playing suited gappers, suited connectors, unsuited connectors and really ATC. Often a pre-flop raise to $10 will get called by 3 callers, who will fold to a c-bet of $20 on most flops. Granted people were adjusting to this by calling my bets often as evidenced by this hand history, which is why I found myself in this tough spot.

Anyway, I didn't think he had 22 (if he did, I still had 10 outs but poor 2.45:1 pot odds), didn't think he had K9 (or A9) to which I'm drawing dead (or to the 7). It was remotely possible that he had a K, because V2 must have led on the turn with at least a K. Still, AK, Kx, AA, were the only hands that I could beat. I thought about folding, made a crying call, he turned over T9, and I spiked a Q on the river for the chop.

@ChrisV
When I started playing NLH (a month ago), it would often be a binary decision (am I beat or not?) that would lead to a fold or a call. Having read stuff here, I've gotten a feel for equity (I know percentages, still don't know how to convert it to the $88 you mention. I think I get it: 70% times the $124 for the call. I suppose I don't mind gambling the $36 against this player), and being sure I'm beaten here a % of the time (still don't know exact computation for north of 90% of the time) and so I called. So thank you for the detailed explanation.

Look, I know you're adjusting, but the plan for your game is not generally to go c bet into 4 people on the flop. Even if they are fit or fold...in a 4-5 way pot, someone hits the flop a lot. This hand is a great example of that. It is to raise enough to get heads up preflop and then you will take down a better % of flops with a c bet.

Further, you're just not good enough postflop to play a hand like 97ss out of position in a multiway pot, as evidenced by you paying this villain off here.

Also, you're making a second bad adjustment in this hand. You should be opening a lot wider from late position. Not so much from UTG+2. Position is really important, and you can raise it big enough in a limpfest to get people to give up an extra big blind pre by inducing UTG and MP players to limp fold.

In summation:

- Raise wider in position, not early
- Raise bigger - big enough to try to get pots down to 2-3 players, so you capture dead big blinds and make your c bets more likely to go through.

___________________________

With respect to your math question, what matters is how often you are good against their range vs. the "odds" you're getting to call. In this hand:

- You have to call $144 more into a pot of $304. That means you need to be good ($144) / ($144 + $304) = 32% of the time for a call to be worth it.

You then have to compare your hand vs. their range. How many bluffs and AA type hands are in it vs. full houses and better 9x?