Grunch.

Hand seems fine to me. It's high variance, but likely +EV given Villain tendencies.

Not true IMO. There is plenty of value to be had from weaker 8x/one pair type hands and draws. We checked so that Villain would bluff/semi-bluff/bet a weaker hand and thus commit himself into calling off the rest of his stack. Which happened. Although we ran into a portion of Villains range that has us beat unfortunately.

Uh okay. I guess I was just confused by the statement that I bolded. I'm guessing that you meant that that is a reason to check, but not in this situation?

To make my thoughts clear, I think betting and checking are both fine. Betting will be +EV due to the amount of draws/weaker hands in villains range that can call. Checking allows us to commit the rest of our stack versus those hands here OTT because Villain will most likely bet with his draws and weaker one pair hands. Against a player who would check back with a draw, I heavily prefer betting.

Assuming OP was not significantly deeper than stated effective stacks against Villian (50bb), I think the mistake here is Preflop. Opening a pot from MP with such a stack size allows for such a low SPR OTF, and with such a low SPR we are ideally looking for spots to apply pressure and get it in. We should be doing this even with marginal holdings as we have little maneuverability on later streets. As someone said earlier, we are trying to take it down. IMO, the hand was played very well post flop. We are likely ahead of a significant part of Villians range OTT. Although, Opening with Ad8d given effective stacks forces us into this marginal situation when I think better opportunities will present themselves later.

About pre flop since some have mentioned it. I was ~400 effective against all the players left to act except villain. A8s is one of the weakest hands I'm willing to open in this situation, and I am not always opening it. My image was super tight at the time, so I thought I could get lay downs from A9/K10 type hands.

You were trying to steal the blinds (7 bucks), and get KT (worse hands) to fold? With a super tight image don't you think the people calling you are weighted towards stronger hands?

If KT folds, doesn't K8 fold? What hands are you ahead of after your flop bet is called?

There's lots of threads lately where Hero seems to want to raise to ensure that they're playing against a very tight range of hands; hands that they're (at best) flipping with, or behind. If A9 and KT folds, you're not going to be ahead on very many flops.

Stove your equity against 3 opponents who've folded A9, KT, etc. and see how you're doing.

I think opening suited Aces should be really standard in HJ+, and a strong go-to option in earlier positions if you have some idea how to navigate the table postflop. I've always found it really weird how LLSNL players consider SAs garbage, considering they're a standard open in 6max online games, which are usually at once tighter, more aggressive, and shallower.

There's five people to act behind us. This is equivalent to six-max first to act. We're short-stacked with almost zero post-flop maneuverability.

Either we have no read on our Villains or we think because someone bluffed once that they're calling bets and check-raises with a weak range, so doubtful we have a good handle on our Villains.

Actually Villain (according to what OP just said) is the only player behind that's short. We're ~75bb deep vs everyone else, which isn't *deep* per se, but it's deep enough I'd at least feel okay playing a hand like this postflop.