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$5-$10 NL You have a $2,500 stack.
You are in the blind with
There are three limpers in for the $10 and the button makes it $75 to go, with $500 more remaining.
I call and so do the three limpers. Pot = $390
I act first and the three limpers are between myself and raiser who acts last.
The flop is
Your play?

I'm looking to build the pot. I have 12 outs for the nut flush and nut straight, plus 6 more overs which could be good if no one flopped a set or 2pair...

I think leading for maybe 275-300 would be good, but I can see opening for full pot as a viable option also. I like winning it right here and now, but i also don't mind a call. Even against a set, we're flipping.

I really dont like flatting the raise preflop. We should be happy to get this in pre against the button with the dead money in the middle. Making it $250 to go will reopen the action to us if button shoves and we can overshove to keep it heads up - I might not do this given reads on the limpers and their stack sizes, but in a live game I'm going to be happy most of the time playing a big pot preflop with AKs.

As played I'm leading this flop for exactly $200. The reason is we can get some loose calls from the limpers and it leaves button enough room to shove over top of us which would open the action back to us again and we can overshove trapping all the dead money in from any calls from the limpers and getting it heads up in a bloated pot against the preflop raiser with a monster draw. I like it even better if we overshove and get a call from one of the limpers as our equity is huge.

I think reraising preflop is fine in a normal game; the problem was, I bought in for $2,500 and had two very aggressive players behind me, who had both limped in this pot. If either of these guys calls my reraise and I miss the flop, they are WAY to likely to call the continuation bet, so reraising seemed weak.

I feel that the more likely you are to have to hit the flop the more prone you should be to holding down the size of the pot preflop.

As for Jedi's bet size I agree 100%, it is critical to bet less than 50% of the raisers stack, thus you leave it open for you to reraise if he moves in.
Plus making a small bet might attract a caller or two before the action gets to the preflop raiser.

I like jedi's line here of betting enough to entice the loose middle players into the put,hoping the preflop raiser goes all in and opens the betting back up so I can shove. Lots of dead money to win against an all in player works for me

Jason

__________________
I'm Not Lucky, I Have Good Karma !

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with this line of thinking.

While it is possible that the limpers are limping some sort of strong hands, its more likely that they are limping some small PP or suited connector, so our raise is for value. By raising to only $250 preflop, the action will reopen to us if button shoves, which will usually discourage a call from either of the limpers.

If the limpers do call, and button has something that he doesn't plan on folding then he is pretty unlikely to flat the reraise, unless of course he has AA which I could see slowplaying to trap more money in on the flop before callin all in.

Worst case scenario is the limpers and the button call our 3bet in which case we're getting 3:1 on our preflop investment which is a pretty good price for a hand as strong as ours, so I really don't mind checking a flop that we miss.

Once the flop comes, I'm happily playing for stacks with any piece of the flop ie top pair or a flush draw with overs.