Re: River fold?
1. It is very important for anyone reading this thread (though the OP seems to get the point) that raising pre-flop behind an MP poster/checker is automatic here. We certainly have a better hand than the MP player and need to pressure the blinds. The extra money in the pot makes this raise even more worthwhile.
2. I see no reason to bet the flop given the way the hand was played pre-flop . This is certainly not an automatic bet at every table if you had raised and gotten four callers, though if you did have the initiative and you thought there was any chance a bet would take the pot down or fold some better (A-high, small pair) hands, then betting is best.
3. You should raise the turn. Waiting until a safe river really doesn't make sense here. This is the key discussion for this hand:
Waiting until the turn when you have a good but vulnerable hand often makes sense on the flop. The reason we do it there is because often our equity on the flop can be very suspect and the presence of a safe turn card will greatly increase/clarify our equity, and we get to force our opponents to put in double bets instead of single bets. Note that there are two very important distinctions between "waiting for a safe turn" and "waiting for a safe river."
a. On the flop, a hand like top pair-good kicker often will not have a huge equity edge against the field, largely because there are two cards left to see. On the turn, though, the equity of made hands is often much clearer, primarily because we only have one card left to see. Since our hand's equity is generally plenty clear by the turn, it makes more sense to go ahead and raise immediately to generate value from hands (like draws) that are willing to put in money on the turn but not on the river unless they hit.
b. The size of the bets between the turn and the river doesn't change. This seems like a trivial point, but it's not. One of the reasons we wait for the turn sometimes is because we get more value on the turn bets. Since turn and river bets are the same size this is not a consideration.
The times that "waiting for a safe river" is generally advisable are usually (in my opinion):
a. When the pot is heads-up
b. You have a hand that is worth more than 2 BB total for the turn and the river, but probably not 4 BB total; hence, you wait to raise the river because you don't want to have to call down a turn-three-bet/river bet and/or because you are more comfortable folding to a river three-bet than to a turn three-bet. (This idea was cited in the late Mid-High forum as "waiting until the river to save bets").
I'm certainly missing a lot here and I'd love to see a more thorough conversation about situations where it's best to "wait for the river".
4. River fold I think is standard, as we only have one pair, the pot is pretty small, and the 4-way nature of the pot means the pot is quite protected and it's unlikely that an opponent is trying to run an audacious bluff/promo. raise. I would only call here if you have a sound read on the MP player which indicates a tendency to raise marginal hands on the river.
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