$1/$2 private game playing loose passive. Players generally unknown to hero and vice versa. No-one seems especially creative. Hero is on his second buy-in and has $123. We are 8-handed.

UTG with $53 limps, mp2 limps, hero is in the HJ with 77 and raises to $15. CO calls, BTN calls, blinds fold, UTG and MP call. 5-way to the flop. Pot is $78.

Flop is 9TJ

UTG donks $25 and has $28 left. MP folds. CO and BTN cover hero.

Hero?

Shove for high variance play.

Fold for nit play.

Don't see how we can do anything but fold flop here, we have two players behind and terrible equity vs. any reasonable range. Shoving flop would be spew.

Limp pre, fold now.

I think you have to fold. You have no FE vs UTG and are mostly behind to crushed vs his range. The only time you are OK is if UTG is donking a bare flush draw or a pair without a flush draw, something like AcKd or AdTd. AcTd has you beat handily. Even something like AcQd is in good shape with two over cards, higher flush and OESD. A hand like QcJd has you totally crushed already and even QdJd is ahead. If either CO or BTN wakes up with a hand the situation just gets worse.

It's unlikely you have more than 25% of the equity, plus you don't want to play on for your stack OOP. So calling is not an option.

If you could call and then go south with the rest of your chips, that would be GTO.

You have UTG's stack size incorrect in one of the two places you reference it, but it doesn't really matter.

Just cut and run, with 2 players on your 6.

Per pokerstove, against 3 @ top 14% hands you have only 17% equity. Kind of shockingly low.

Right.... Playing a short stack, we should be reserving our 7.5x BB raises for hands that we are not going to post about later..... TT/AQ or better. Limping seems quite reasonable here. No set no bet.

As played, fold.

Shove and hope for the 8s obviously.

+1

Folding flop is of course a reasonable and easy-to-defend play. But I think there's also an argument for a shove here, so I'll go through with it for the intellectual exercise. BTW thanks BadlyBeaten for pointing out UTG's incorrect stack size. It should be $68.

A shove bet accomplishes two things. First, it will most certainly cause UTG to call, though he is going to GII anyway as he's pot committed at this point. 77c is about 40% equity vs his preflop limp call donk bet flop range, which consists of JJ-88, AQs-AJs, KTs+, QTs+, J9s+, T8s+, AQo-AJo, AcKs, AcKh, AcKd, AcTs, AcTh, AcTd, Ac9s, Ac9h, Ac9d, KTo+, QTo+, J9o+, T9o.

He probably slow plays a flopped flush and doesn't bet out. That's just what players at this level do. Pot is $93 to me after the donk bet and I need to put in $58 to win the pot and the rest of his stack, which is $28. so the money is right against this player. So that's $58 to win $121 for pot odds of 2:1. So the money is right if hero gets heads up.

A donk from early position then a shove bet should cause players behind hero to fold out some hands that are ahead of hero and long shot draws. Though if a player behind hero decides to call with a similar hand range as UTG plus a few nutted hands hero's equity drops considerably and his pot odds stay about the same, so that's not a very good situation.

So on balance folding seems like a better play and shoving is spewy unless hero can get lots of folds from players behind.

Limp pre. Eff stacks dictate that limping 77 is a better any here pre flop.

Flop: fold. When V leads, his range is: flopped flush, flopped straight - possibly with flush redraw - flopped set, two pair, a pair and a flush draw, or even just a higher pair with no redraw. If V has a pair with the Qc, even your miracle card won't save you. And if one of the Vs yet to act either flopped it or has the Ac, you'll get even more unwanted action (though, bigger pot in that case).

This is an easy fold on the flop. Biggest mistake in this hand was open raising 77 with such small stacks. Limp and you max your return on investment when you flop set and also have max opponents to pay you. Raising, you will win without a flop sometimes, and you will be able to bet and take it down on the flop sometimes, but you'll average a much smaller profit and create more variance with this strategy.

+1