[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
your equity is only 8% of the current pot

[/ QUOTE ]

Preflop isn't about equity.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, let's think about it. If raising 5 limpers is profitable, that means I want to put as many bets as I can as long as all 5 limpers call, right? So, I put 16% of the total money that is going in and will have to fold around 90% of the time on the flop. Please, explain why raise with 88 is profitable here.

[/ QUOTE ]

Assuming 5 limpers call and nobody re-raises, you are getting 11.5:2 on your raise, when the required pot odds are somewhere around 15:2. When you flop your set, you have 3 streets and 5 players to pay you off, making it more likely that you will recover 1.75BB postflop on average. As mentioned before, you will also sometimes get a 4-card flop.