5/5 8 handed

Early (1000) limps, middle (500) raise to 20, CO (1000) calls, I (900) call on the buttons with AdKdJc7d2d, blinds fold, early calls.

(90)

Jd7s2c

Xxx

Middle is a calling station.

Are you betting this dry board with 3 pairs, no low draw?

If you are, I assume pot is the only sizing, right ?

Yes, I'm betting. Why would pot be the only sizing? This hand isn't massively pushing equity, but benefits a lot from clearing equity. Smaller bet makes a lot of sense.

To maximise the chance to clear some equity.

Small bet like half pot?

In a way, but also maximizing the strength of their continuing range and putting a lot of money in with a marginal holding. I've noticed in many of your comments that you are too protection-oriented. Big bets are for spots where you either have a big hand or represent a big hand. I think this hand has other uses than representing a big hand, which is typical for mediocre holdings.

Or smaller, depends on what kind of sizings you are using in such spots. Third pot? It will make them fold most of their junk and you can still represent hands like strong A3:s (unless you foolishly bet big with all of them).

I agree with equity denial bet on the flop, i often use like a 40% psb bet in this spot.

4 of a suit is pretty bad, its probably still ok to call pre but in some lineups (and vs aggro blinds) maybe we let it go.

One of the nice things about small bets on flop is we can still use our A blocker to effectively rep lows later in hand and overrealize our equity in some instances.

I check it back, there are very few good runouts and we want everyone in when we turn our 6 outer to the effective nuts.

is the idea behind this basically:

betting big for protection is the play when you have a hand that's actually really good and worth betting for protection/can be protected? i.e. something like AA4 that you don't wanna let like a J hit 2p or A3 get there for free

In regards to using pot-sized bet on the flop in this spot:

First, Hero's hand is not a good hand to pot because it is probably not strong-enough. Hero is not that likely to improve beyond 2 pair (even if we improve to kj or aj it doesnt clearly help) while villains are much more likely to make lows and all sorts of other high hands.

In most omaha variants, we often want our pot-sized bets in medium and high spr spots to be polarizing. Even though deciding when we want to be polar is a lot trickier in split-pot variants.

Still, one guideline for polarization is having nut blockers and/or future nut blockers. With akj27 on this texture both the a and j are meaningful blockers. But the a isn't a very unique blocker - and while the j is very useful for representing top set, Hero range for calling pre and betting the flop can still be very wide.

So yes, Aa4xx would be a much better candidate to bet pot, but also aa4xx is a reasonable strong hand on this flop and many/most will not be good polarization candidates. Sidecards matter greatly.

Many other ajxxx hands would be better candidates for polarization.
Such as aaj69 or aqqj6 or akkj8 or aj995.
Or aaa78.

Those hands have very useful blockers but will often lack much showdown value if we see a river multi-way. And also will have poor playability many turns. Even though these hands do have real nut potential and meaningful equity on the flop, the fold equity is so valuable (not just the flop, we can put in additional bets) that turning them polar will often be the best line.

Playing polar styles will mean we also take similar lines with sets, premium 2 way hands and some weaker nut lo draws.



Oh and final point for now. Hero doesn't give up on polarization by using a smaller bet on the flop because his range still contains many nutted combinations. So in a spot like this a smaller flop bets lets you retain a lot of flexibility for future streets.

Also if you bet less than pot with future blockers you keep the spr high enough so you have fold equity later and V is not committed. Last thing you want when setting up a bluff is short stacks.

I guess Monika already answered this question brilliantly. But yes you are right - marginal made hands are not worth relentlessly protecting.

ya, thanks, guys