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Proctecting your hand involves cutting down your opponents odds so that calling becomes an unprofitable situation for them. A checkraise on this turn would have made the pot even larger and given your opponents even better odds to chase X-outters to the river. So checkraising 3 opponents who have already called one bet is not protecting anything, it's just for value.

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I agree.

That is... assuming that I'm understanding both your post and SSHE correctly (I don't have a copy in front of me), the point of a check-raise in regards to protecting your hand is to have your opponents face two bets cold, not a raise from a single bet that they've already called.