HERO/CO(300) first hand

300 eff, players are middle aged and varying race

BTN straddles 15

SB/BB/UTG call

HERO JJ

Fold/raise/call

why?

I vote for a raise because button will defend with a dominated range. Bring your short-stack game. Don't like letting the button raise just yet; some people will squeeze their button straddle with ATC, but not everybody.

Raise bc SPR is 5 and you have JJ

Raise. We can't count on straddle to raise for us and we'd prefer forcing him to call and define his hand or fold and give us ultimate position, and we love the dead money he leaves behind. It's possible someone is expecting a raise from the straddle so we will have to be wary if we get reraised by one of the limpers, but our hand, position, and current size of pot, I'd make it $75.
Our hand and position are plenty good enough to build a pot here preflop and if everyone folds, we pick up $60. 20bb with no contest? Tasty.

Do you think that position even matters here because if there is a raise and a call it is likely that all of the money will go in OTF?

yes, bc if H raises to $75, it's not an auto stack-off OTF. We can fold to a bet or to a bet and raise, we can check behind, we can fire. A lot more options in position.

I would snap-raise, this is a great position to be in. We crush their ranges & there is a ton of dead money to be taken. Also, if we just flat, we are going to have to give up a lot postflop in a 4 way pot, which is leaving money on the table with such a good hand.

Main thing in my mind, position-wise, is the risk of a limp/rr. Cuz you know people love to do that in a straddled pot. Worth thinking about what you're gonna do, and whether your action would be different if the SB does it as opposed to UTG.

Look at the dealer and firmly but quietly say, pot.

Do we have some nuclear read that one of the EPs only enters w QQ+? Everything besides raise is gross here. We're way ahead of average calling hands and have an excellent spot to easily build a 1:1ish Spr otf, still way ahead and stack/double.

80pre/gii

The value of position goes down significantly as stack size goes down. So yea, at 20bb, not very important.

Raise to $90. Shove flop.

Why: your hand is too strong to set mine here and you are unlikely to hold up vs. a field of 5 players. A pot sized raise sets up an easy flop shove.

with a solid read that button always raises his straddle we could make a case for l/rr. Having him check it back would be a disasterous. I make it $90.

On preflop sizing I think 90 is a little big. While we don't hate getting folds all around, I think it's more profitable to bet a little smaller and keep in some dominated pairs. Since this is a 1/3 game, people are not used to calling 90 pre, and they are going to be overly tight against a raise that they perceive to be very large. I think I'd make it 65 here. This smaller sizing is fine because we're essentially 20bb deep here and we'll have an spr of about 2 against 1 caller with a hand that's difficult to outflop in a hu pot. If everyone calls the 65, we're getting a lot of money in preflop as a money favorite, and we'll comfortably be able to stack-off on 40% of flops.

I would fold to an ep l/rr, and jam over a 3b from the button straddler.

Doing anything but raise requires a special table dynamic, which you haven't given, so it's a clear raise. Raising to $90 gives us $210 left and a pot of $225 if we get one caller, setting up a pot-sized shove.

I would only fold if any of the three limpers were so incredibly nitty that we are hurting against their range, and the button will usually raise and decline us set-mining odds.

I would only limp if the button will raise a very high % of the time and we intend to l/rr AI.