[W. Deranged]

This is really tough in my opinion...

I think we need to answer two questions:

1. How does our hand stack up against BB? What percentage of the time do we think we are beating BB here?

2. What kind of hand is the LP funny guy likely to have? How much equity does he have? Do we want him confronting a single or double bet?

Question #1: The 8h does not seem hugely likely to have helped big blind unless he has 98 (though I doubt he'd bet this into the pfr as he's passive) or K8 (I'll assume he's not playing 84 often). Some percentage of the time he is simply betting out again with a K because the turn is a blank.

If he'd usually only bet out with hands that beat us, raising makes very little sense as it's likely to get the hand heads-up with a hand against which we are drawing thin.

The more often he'd bet out with a weaker hand the more appealing raising is, clearly.

Question #2: The guy behind us is getting almost 10-1 on a call, which he needs just barely over 4 outs on average to call the turn correct. So any 5 out type pair hand is clearly getting odds to call, gutshots basically are with implied odds (though this is not that likely). Weaker Ks do not have odds to call though they may anyway.

The ultimate point I see is that because the pot is pretty big the LP players overcall is generally not going to be that profitable for us in the long-run. He'll be breaking even or close to it a large percentage of the time. In my opinion his presence greatly encourages raising. (Another thing to consider is that he may have a hand like JT that'll put in any number of bets on the turn but fold the river).



So my basic conclusion is that raising is probably better if we think that there's any reasonable chance we're beating the EP dude. Since we aren't likely to get three-bet since he's passive, I like it more.