Blinds $1-$2. Game is $2-$100 spread-limit where the most you can raise is $100 over the previous bet. Effective stack $300.

UTG opens to $12, there are three callers, I call in the BB with KdQc.

FLOP: Qc9s4d (pot: $60, 5-ways). I check. UTG bets $30, one fold, a guy in MP calls, and the Button folds.

Action is on me. Fold, call, or raise?

have you seen UTG get out of line with raises or no reads on him? wondering if people think its bettter to 3b or fold pre instead of call. reminds me of the thread i linked in the ll pen from years ago doesnt it a little

Preflop call is meh. KQo doesn't do great against an UTG range in most situations. After several callers the pot is bloated and playing the and post flop will be expensive. If you have a good read on UTG this may be worth a call but in general fold is better.
If UTG is a nit who would have checked any hands you beat then folding is OK. In general though if your really considering folding top pair on the flop then you shouldn't have called preflop. Raising is turning your hand into bluff and isn't +EV in the long run. So call is by far the standard move.

Raise or fold pre, we can call if it's suited but not off suite (it doesn't play well multiway).

As played why would you raise? You would be helping him to play perfect by folding out all his air, lower pairs, and other hands we're possibly beating and he would only call/raise with AQ+. Just call, but be on high alert (because he raise UTG, his range should be very narrow with AQ usually at the bottom of it so if he starts bet/bet/betting really big we should just fold. I might even fold to a big turn bet, but that's just me).

Hands like this are why I've started to think KQ is just a trouble hand. I agree with everyone else that calling is probably the standard play. Folding seems too nitty, and raising seems spewy.

I just don't love calling when we're OOP and multi-way on a fairly connected board. We're going to hate making top 2 if that guy in MP has JT. We have to go runner-runner JT to make a straight, and we'd lose to any A. The best possible scenario here is we spike another Q, and hope we're not up against better Qx.

Even if the turn checks through, it'll be hard to get value from worse on the river.

All my aggro instincts say we should try to take this down now with a raise, but the part of me that's trying to behave myself and not have people here yelling at me thinks maybe we should make a disciplined fold.

RESULT: I made one of those decisions that felt incredibly stupid as I was doing it: I check-raised to $80.

Both players called. Turn 6c. I check. UTG bets $100, MP calls, I just give up and fold. River 9x, UTG bets $100 and MP folds.

…I had no GOOD thoughts here, I was literally raising “just to see where I’m at.” But my hand was too strong to fold and the connectedness of the board made me wary to just call with my hand. (I would have just called on a Q84 board, where my K doesn’t complete a straight.) But I wasn’t thinking of any ranges, had no idea whether I was bluffing or raising for value—not a clue, just a dumb and thoughtless play.

Fold pre - and that's a 3bb open with only 2 callers- calling a 6x open with KQo and 3 callers is mega spew - As played I have no idea. I guess I would raise/fold here as all the options kinda suck and I think this one sucks the least.