Betting the flop for hand protection?

[jakrpanda]

A hypothetical - I'm on the button with AKQT, 2 limpers in front of me and I limp on the button. I get a good flop - AQJ rainbow. I have the nut straight but considering the board will pair 27% of the time I run the serious possibility that someone will draw out on me to a full house and chances are pretty good that my hand won't get any better.

The 2 limpers check to me, should I bet to protect my made hand? If so what size bet should I be making to discourage them trying to draw out? Should I pot it automatically? I'm looking for feedback because I feel I've been drawn out on way too often. It seems that anything less than pot sized bet get's no respect. Also, if I pot it with 2 limpers and the first one simply calls the second will surely get good odds to call also.

[Troll_Inc]

What I generally do is bet pot if

1) I have the best hand
2) I have the best hand and want to build the pot (you want to play big pots with big hands)
3) I have an OK hand that I think I can take the pot down


On the flop, I don't think too often you want to bet less than the pot. For me, it's usually either check or bet pot.

[TheRempel]

Well even in hypothetical terms the button limp is bad.

At any given point in a hand you should be looking to create a situation where you can a) protect your hand and b) maximize the money you will make on later streets.

In this case you don't really need to worry about protecting your hand so much. An ace or queen on the turn or river will give you the nuts and second nuts respectively. A jack is ugly but you want AJ, QQ, QJ and JJ calling the flop bet without odds.

As for the second part, a large part of the reason you want to be here is so you can bet more on the turn and value bet larger on the river. If you check the flop and the turn is a brick your turn bet will be substantially smaller than if you had bet the flop.

The only reason to check here is if a two pair hand will fold the flop if you bet but call the turn if you check, and this is greatly outweighed by the other factors. It is generally correct to bet even when your opponent is correct to call and is getting odds.

[sahaguje]

Do not bother too much about pot protection. With a good hand, you aim at maximizing your wins, not minimizing your losses. And with average stacks, potting the flop is usually the best way to do that.

[jakrpanda]

Ok thanks for the input guys, just wanted to see if my game had leaks and of course it does. In this particular situation I bet 1/2 pot size and then got beat eventually by a full house (he was holding QQ and the J paired on the board) so I started looking back over it wondering what I could've done better. A pot sized bet probably wouldn't have discouraged him but it would've maximized my win if the board hadn't paired.

Concerning limping on the button, I'm new to PLO so I'm really lost when it comes to preflop raising. In NLHE in position I play a pretty LAG game so I may raise almost anything from the button. Any "typical" preflop raising suggestions?