[johnbeans]

It seems people love to not fully read the OP, and make trivial posts that offer nothing to the thread. So let me reiterate: I was sweating a friend, witnessed this hand, called him out on what I thought was a misplay by not value betting, and then posted here to verify my thoughts on the hand. Now as far the flop play I think blindly betting into a multi-way pot just because we hit top pair and it's been checked to us with a flush draw present is far from ideal. Let's look at the different possibilities this multi-way pot offers.

a) It’s very likely somebody has flopped a flush draw
b) There is a fair chance somebody has an OESD (Q10)
c) There is a decent chance somebody has flopped two pair, a set, or TPTK/TPNK

I would say it's fairly unlikely that all three players have flopped air. So let's examine how our options (and I can really only think of two) on the flop and compare them to the different possibilities.

1) We make a 1/2 to PSB

- A PSB is going to give the flush/OESD 1-2 on their money & a 1/2 PSB is going to give them 1-3 on their money, insufficient odds to call for 1 card to come (they need about 5-1). However it's safe to say that we will still see these draws flat calling here a lot of the time regardless. I also think we see hands like TPTK/TPNK going into call down mode and just flat calling here a decent amount of the time as well. So on a checked brick turn we still don't know where we are. An ultimately worse situation for us would be getting check-raised. Hands like 66/JJ/JK/K6/J6 (both the SB & BB limped into this pot) are very likely to go for a C/R since it is a 4-way pot and it is probable that somebody will bet. Hands like QT and the flush draws are also likely to attempt a C/R here, and even worse some of the time we will see TPTK/TPNK C/R us. With this kind of range in a 4-way pot betting here seems to only be good when all of our opponents have flopped air or dry pairs J’s and below.

2) We check through

- Checking allows us to outdraw hands like J6 or stronger K’s. It gives hands like Q10, the flush draws, and the weaker pairs a free chance to outdraw us. However, a lot of these drawing hands were at least calling our flop bet anyways, so by checking we keep the pot small with our marginal holdings. There are definitely a lot of cards we don’t like seeing on the turn (any spade, T, Q, A, & 9), but it is unlikely anybody will abuse these scare cards unless they have indeed improved. If it is checked to us on a bricked turn we can now bet with much more confidence as we are dealing with a much smaller range of hands that we are worried about calling or C/Ring us. The strongest reasons for checking to me are that it keeps the pot small with a slightly above average stack, and it gives the drawing hands only 1 card to make their hand if they call our turn bet (since we’re only betting dry turns).

As far as the preflop play I think this is a classic chip accumulator/taking -ev shots and turning it into +EV scenario. We're trying to see lots of cheap flops in late position with an above average stack with pretty much ANY TWO CARDS.