[Lawrence Ng]

The main problem with this hand exist with your position and the fact you caught the flop with a pair and a gutshot to boot. So no matter how it's played out (especially with a pot of this size), you are pretty committed to pot showdown unless something really scary comes up on the runner runner.

Playing aggressively or passively on the flop won't make too much a difference imho but if you want to build the pot a little bigger believing you have the best hand at the moment, then I would probably check-raise the flop. Calling isn't too bad an option either to wait and see how the turn comes but you may sacrifice some EV here if you are ahead and miss out on some small bets that could be gained. If you have 8 players seeing the flop, then very likely at least half of them will continue on to the turn (with correct pot odds to chase most draws), so might as well check-raise imho and take advantage of the EV here.

I like the turn raise if you really think it can thin the field down. This is a great spot to do it and the King, while not the best card that fell, is definitely a lot better than a spade, 4 card straight or a smaller pair to the board or an Ace.

Then again I would have to think how dangerous it is to check and give a free card on so I would very likely have bet the turn instead of raise.

The rest of the hand as it played it is straightforward. You are calling the 3-bet on the turn hoping to really hit your gutshot and praying on the river that he had 2 pair that got counterfitted by King pairing up. Pretty standard from here on.

As you can see, my style is pretty aggressive in these big pots. I approach it with one thing in mind - winning the most I can from it. Folding here never crosses my mind simply because of the pot size and the fact that when you have 8 way btf, there are bound to be donkey hands that come up. If I lose, so be it, cost me what.. 2 big bets or so in mistakes in a 21 BB pot, whereas folding is a 21 big bet mistake.

Lawrence