[Nick C]

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I'd underbet the turn a lot to keep the idiots in.
$35 on the turn, shove teh river.

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Really? Seven people saw this flop, there's a damn good chance a flush draw is out there, and someone calling for $35 on the turn with a flush draw is not being an idiot.

Meanwhile, versus our massively vulnerable hand, someone calling with 9x is not being much of an idiot either.

Also, someone with 9c3c or Kh2h is not calling our river push. (OK, I suppose the Kh2h might if it spikes a river K, but still.)

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Think about how many will hang in there, and how big the pot gets, and the chances are that once it's that big and nothing bad lands on the turn, how much more milking you can do. Compare this with betting to give poor odds.

I have to admit my gut alone tells me this is the most +EV approach (I think about stuff like this using my 'play this a million times over, do you profit or not?' approach), so I'd welcome some theory applied here from someone good at it.

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I'll admit that I'm torn over how much to bet, and I'll also admit that I didn't really even consider an underbet. And there are potential advantages to playing the turn the way you propose.

To take one obvious scenario, let's say someone out there holds Ah9h and is pretty much calling anything short of a push. Meanwhile, the other two people in the hand are sitting on Ac5s and 7c4c. Let's also say that they'll continue chasing for an underbet but will go away if this starts looking expensive. Well, in that case, playing for $105 of your opponents' collective money while investing only $35 of your own, without decreasing your chances of winning the hand very much at all, is better than playing for a $105 overbet HU.

Also, playing for an underbet doesn't commit us as much, so there's that too. On a crappy river card, we can simply check and make a decision.

However, one player will not always be hogging all the outs like he was in the scenario I gave. And also the A5o guy might've come along for more than an underbet, and meanwhile I'm not so sure the 74s guy is continuing to chase at all, now that he missed his miracle on the cheap streets. And, of course, I have in no way exhausted the hand possibilities that could be out there.

It's hard to make a confident decision about how to proceed here when the hands we'll get called by on the flop is such a mix of good draws and weak draws and made hands of varying strength that hope to improve and/or to get to showdown cheaply. From what I've seen, though, live players have a tendency to disregard pot size to a surprising degree. So while they may call $15 on the flop because it's just $15, once the bet goes up to $35, or $75, or $105 on the turn and they're still looking at bottom pair and an overcard to a super-scary board, they could easily decide it's starting to look expensive and it's time to dump their hand. I agree that potentially we could get paid on a river push after building the pot on the turn, but I think the player in question is usually either going to need to improve to a second best like two pair or is going to have to have flopped something strong he couldn't let go of (like two pair).