[Pokey]

Yucky -- I don't like the way this hand went.

Nothing about this hand should make you comfortable. If you had a TWO-card flush that would be a totally different story, but with a one-card flush you just have nothing to like, here.

On the flop you have no folding equity unless you're ahead, at which point you're going to win a very small pot with the best hand. If you hit a heart you'll be afraid of ANYBODY willing to call a bet; if you miss your heart you'll only get action if you are beaten. Nobody is calling down on THAT board with a hand that you beat. If you bet, your hand is a bluff. Your only REAL hope is that someone has a great heart draw but nothing else, and calls down hoping (unsuccessfully) to hit their fourth heart on the turn or river.

You check (which is fine by me), and some stranger wakes up and makes a decent bet. What now? With two players left to act behind you the situation is pretty grim. If you call you'll be OOP in a fairly large pot, two streets away from showdown and holding a VERY mediocre hand with a VERY mediocre draw. This is not a recipe for success. Worse yet, someone could easily check-raise behind you, making your life even worse. You'll never know where you stand until showdown, and by then it will be far, far too late. I think your best bet is to fold the flop now.

As played you actually got kind of lucky because nobody else called or raised behind you. Now the turn comes with an absolutely DREADFUL card. That K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] just chills me, because now A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]x has your butt in a sling and will squeeze you to death. If villain bet the flop without a heart he'll shut down now and you'll win VERY little; if villain has a hand that beats you villain will continue to push HARD and you'll lose a fortune. You've got reverse implied odds all over the place, and a big enough stack to make that a miserable experience. Check/folding is a viable option, but that feels really ugly. I like a small bet -- make it $3. Hope that villain either doesn't trust you and calls down with his pair/two pair/set, or that villain gets scared and smooth-calls with Q[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. If you get raised, fold and move on. On the river, make another small bet and hope for the best. To my mind, it's probably your best chance to get to a relatively cheap showdown and STILL win.

This situation sucks; that's why I like three-betting preflop. Multiway, a hand like TT suffers greatly, especially OOP. You're afraid of every overcard, you're RIO is horrific, and you can't like anything you see. Make a strong three-bet preflop to, say, $6 or so. At that point you should either get heads-up on the flop or you'll scoop the pot uncontested. If you're heads-up you can usually steal it with a well-placed bet of half-pot or so. You avoid tough decisions and you make habitual blind thieves pee themselves. You also get maximum value from your strong hands like, say, TT.

A preflop three-bet makes this all play MUCH easier. As it stands, your play says you are treating TT the same as 22. If that's the case then you're playing fit-or-fold on the flop. You didn't fit -- time to fold.