[mack848]

1) In Limit hold’em you should be looking to push small edges. It is not good play to avoid raising when you have a clear equity advantage because your hand might get tricky to play on a later street. If your hand will win more than it’s fair share, it’s a raise preflop.

If there are 5/6 limpers to you in the blinds, then a raise is for value. You almost have a raise for value to hit your set alone (7.5:1 shot). If you add in the times that three undercards flop, or you hit a gutshot straight draw (givng you up to 6 outs to improve), you have more than your fair share of equity – so should raise.

If the flop is rags, then you have to do what you can to protect your hand –possibly going for a check/raise. It may well be that you cannot protect it, so you have to decide, given the number of opponents and flop texture, whether to wait for the turn or whether to bet for value, given that you probably have the best hand.

2) You don’t have to bet your unimproved overcards into a large field on the flop. This is clearly situational and in your example I would check, as you only have 4 or 5 outs and someone is pretty likely to have a J when there are 7 seeng the flop.