1/3 NL

Hero is young 20's kid. just arrived at new table after requesting table change. stack is about $700

HJ- table changed after hero, this is his first hand. 40s WG who is a semi-regular but I've never played with him before. by the way he carries himself at the table and the fact that he plays a decent amount, I'm guessing he's at least somewhat competent. stack is about $300

LB- 30s WG, just requested a seat change to get on a LAGtard's left. not sure how relevant that is, but the fact that this guy knows he should be on LAGtard's left says he's at least somewhat aware of the concept of position. stack is $81

2 limps from stacks of 500+, hero raises to 15 in LJ, HJ glances at hero's stack for a few seconds and flats. folds to LB who jams for 81. folds back to hero.

my question is whether or not we should be 4betting smallish (maybe like 140-160) here to iso the LB or just flatting. not a super interesting spot but definitely a spot i'm unsure of. thoughts?

Am I missing what our hand is?

If we think our hand is better than the shovers, then I think I would mostly shove the weaker end (AK/AQ/TT/etc., which will put extreme pressure on hands sucking up a lotta equity such as pocket pairs/overcards/etc.) and mostly flat the stronger end (the bigger pocket pairs, where I would love the other guy to come along for 1/4 his stack). Note that this is thanks to having "just" a 100bb stack; if stacks start getting much larger (and therefore much more chance of Villain sandbagging a monster) then I'd more lean towards just flatting even the weaker end of my range.

GcluelessNLnoobG

lol my bad. hero has 88

the two limpers have capped ranges, so wouldnt expect them to call a shove from you, however they may call the 81 and obviously 88 doesnt play great multiway so .... raise.

88 I'm either raising or folding. It's kinda dependent on if you feel the HJ will always call or fold a lot. 88 isn't strong enough to play against 2 players in a giant pot from preflop.

Flatting with KK+, AKs always. Flatting some QQ, AKo, AQs. Rest of our range is either raising or folding

88 definitely falls into the weaker part of our range, so I'm shoving. It puts extreme pressure on overcards (which are sucking up huge equity) and will even put huge pressure on a couple of hands that crush us (like TT/99). Basically, we want these hands to make a huge mistake by folding, and the best way to make them make that mistake is by shoving instead of flatting.

But again, important to note that this is with 100bb stacks when there is already about 1/3rd of that in the middle. Can't make a monster mistake of shoving 88 into a bigger hand with like 300bb stacks, where a minraise might be best.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I'd raise to iso, reading HJ looking at our stack to confirm set mining implied odds. Think he'll fold to the 4b.

cool. i ended up 4betting to $160. my reasoning for this was that i thought this actually looked stronger than jamming. i think 4betting small makes it more likely that he folds parts of his range that are ahead of me (99-TT). if i jam i think i often get the same result, but i think it's more likely the HJ will put me on a hand like AK and get sticky with 99 or TT. thoughts?

Decent thought process, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG