Re: Making him fold a better hand
 

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But here, MP is LP, and likely won't be doing any raising.

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Totally disagree. The MP hands we fear are Tx and 88. Typical LP players slowplay those hands on the flop and then put in a dramatic turn raise. Coldcalling the flop is a clear warning that this may be coming. Not necessarily of course, but tens are common cards and we should be aware of the danger.

Note that my understanding of OP is that MP is a fairly normal LP and not some 80/2/0.1 pathological calling station.

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I disagree that there is any worry here that bet/fold will leave us in the dangerous situation of folding the best hand, given the above.

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Assume it goes 3-bet flop, all call, bet turn. There are two ways you might get talked off the best hand:

1. UTG has something like JJ/99 and raises. The idea behind this play is to drive out the third player while securing a free showdown for the pair. He probably intends to fold to a 3-bet and reasons that this is no worse than calling down. You might think this is a poor play and I might agree with you but that really isn't the point. People do this once in a while.

2. The general read on MP is a little off or he has a loose wiring moment as bad players so often do. He sees that he can represent trips and takes it into his head to make a free showdown raise from the button with 8x or a small pocket pair.

Even if such plays are quite rare they still make a big difference because the pot is so large.

But the biggest problem as I said before is paying to see the river and then not seeing the river. It's almost worth calling a raise just to take a card. That means nearly an entire BB of EV disappears when you are forced to fold your outs.

Re: Making him fold a better hand
 

Stellar, you make some interesting points (as usual). Yet, it still seems to me that your approach (i.e., just calling the flop raise rather than 3-bet and lead the turn) is based on a few possibilities that are not especially likely.

Specifically:

(1) the chance that MP is slow-playing with a 10 or 88 in his hand;
(2) the chance that UTG will raise the turn with a worse hand, and make us fold incorrectly;
(3) the chance that MP will shed his loose/passive skin (and remember, OP said her was mostly passive both pre and post-flop) and try to represent trips on the turn.

Yes, one of these situations might occur, but I think it is more likely that they won't.

Re: Making him fold a better hand
 

Turn play: Check/fold is probably OK. UTG either has quad tens, an overpair to yours or AK and just made his pair. He could also have JJ for a split but that is unlikely.

If you want, check and call him down and see which of the above he has.

Re: Making him fold a better hand
 

Check/fold turn and move on to next hand. There's quite a few more capping hands that holds an A as opposed to the ones that doesn't. Also we won't succeed making UTG fold KK or QQ every time, Id say it's more like 1/3 of the time.

I really think it's -EV to put anymore bets in on turn.

Re: Results
 

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So I check the turn, UTG bets, MP folds, I check-raise, UTG 3-bets and I fold.

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Sometimes UTG is going to have AA here and is certainly not going to fold, I think AK is hardly ever going to fold. So how often will KK and QQ fold? I'm not sure.

But you have to figure he might have KK or QQ only 1/4 to 1/2 (my guesstimate) of the time and the other times he has AA or AK. So about half the time off the bat this doesn't work. Will it work the other half of the time enough to make it worth it? I don't know. I don't think so, though.