I am new to this game and am trying to incorporate a small-hand small-pot type motto to prevent long term leaks in my game. This situation arose the other day at my tightish 1/3nl game. The details are fuzzy for me so I will estimate (perhaps this is already a leak)

My image so far after around 2-3 hours is probably weak tight. Villain1 and Villain2 seem competent (for a weak game that is) and tight.

Hero (MP) : ~100BB eff
Villain1 (But) : ~100BB eff
Villain2 (SB) : ~60BB

Hero Dealt AKo raises to 5BB
Button Calls, SB calls

Pot is 16BB ( $48.00 )

Flop: Ax9d7d (my ace is not the diamond).
SB bets $20
Hero reraises to $60
Button thinks for a bit and reraises to $130.00
Pot in now $258.00, $70 more to call.
SB Folds.
Hero is stuck....

My game is weak in these situations, I have been burned plenty in the past with TPTK. If I simply call then the pot will be $258 going into the turn and I have maybe $155 left leaving a ~1/2 PSB OOP (which would be dumb). I see RRAI on flop or fold. I do not feel comfortable risking my whole stack with TPTK in these situations ( I did not put Button on a semi-bluff flush or straight draw given his play).

My question: what kinds of rationalities should I be looking at when facing issues like this? Should I have just called the SB flop bet and let draws through?

We're just deep enough that its standard to dump top pair in this spot vs a villain described as competent and tight. We're either crushed or we're flipping against a monster draw.

If villain was spewy and far more likely to do this with any flush draw then we should continue but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Raising sb's flop bet was fine, you're happy to commit vs sb for 60bb. Calling (with the hope that button will fold) would have also been defendable (he's only going to hit his draw on the turn 18% of the time). We're just unlucky that the button woke up with a hand.

Reload. Move on to next hand. These things happen. Its water off a ducks back.

he cold 3bets the flop for a near minraise. we have to fold for sure

So why are you raising the flop to 60 if you want to play small hand, small pot?

One huge misconception that lots of low stakes players make is they assume they up against a FD whenever there are two cards of the same suit on the flop. If someone is calling with the top 25% of hands pf, only 10% of those hands will have the right FD. Therefore, the odds of there being a FD is only 6% per player. Even with 4 callers, you're up against a FD 23% of the time. At the same time, you'll be up against a set just about as often. The set is going nowhere and you're going to lose a lot of money if you push your TPTK. On the other hand, a flush is going to announce itself easily.

Next step is by raising to 60, the pot bloats to $128 and you have $135 left. If there's a call, you have less than a PSB left. You've created a big pot. You either have c/f going forward or commit your stack. You also haven't discouraged a FD. A lot of people (even on 2+2) have heard that you are 2:1 to hit your flush draw after the flop. They end up making the mistake that they think they are getting pot odds to call a bet on the flop getting 2:1. They ignore that they have to see 2 cards to get those odds and there's another round of betting.

Therefore in my mind a raise does little for you unless you commit at that point that you'll send your stack in on the turn, barring a scare card. If you want to try to keep the pot small until you have more information on what the others are doing, you want to call.

As played, a cold 3bet is a set almost all the time. If the villain is thinking, he knows you've virtually committed yourself. That's what he's hoping, so I'd fold.

Wow, great post didn't know about those exact flush draw%.

A $10 preflop raise is a little small at my 1/3 table, but at a tightish table it looks like it got the result you more or less wanted (i.e. <= 3 ways to the flop).

SB's lead is so small, it kinda looks like a draw wanting to give himself favourable odds. If we are going to raise, I think we have to raise a little more (right now we are offering him fairly decent odds of over 3:1). I probably slow down after that if called. I'm constantly at odds with myself on whether simply calling the flop bet is better than raising. Against morons, I think raising is clearly better. Against players who can easily fold TP (who are donking to "see where they are at"), I'm not convinced raising is good here (but I could be very very wrong).

As played, I think this is a fairly easy fold. Two people have shown interest in the hand (especially us) and that doesn't seem to faze the guy behind us who has just pot committed himself. He's either crushing us already or has a draw ranging from the good to monster (monster straight flush draws are actually ahead of TP here).

Thanks for the replies guys. I will continue to observe how I get myself into situations with TPTK vs 1 villain and the usual 3+ (when the game is looser than this one).