A stand against ridiculousness with 97s / dry side pot

[Al_Capone_Junior]

$25 NL game on party. It's been playing kinda wild. I always look for games where the average pot is close to the buy-in, thus indicating extreme overplaying of hands, thus meaning easy money. This game meets those standards.

I'm in MP with with 9s7s. Two limp and I limp The guy next to me in the cutoff limps. Button raises the minimum to a buck. BB calls, the limpers call and I call. Then the guy in the cutoff suddenly goes all-in for $3.60 more with a limp-reraise. Only one of the previously mentioned players (the button) has folded when it gets to me. They all have decent stacks, near the buy-in or bigger, except for the limp-reraiser, who as I said, is all-in. I go ahead and call, getting about 4:1 on my call.

I called here because the limp-reraise was absolutely ridiculous, because I was still getting good pot odds when it got back to me, and most importantly, because my call closed the action. I am quite sure that the player in the cutoff is merely going all-in with an ace out of desperation to steal a pot, because he's so short-stacked. I hate this BS and I'm not going to lay down my hand in this situation for it.

The flop came 8d, 5c, 4d. It was checked to me. I bet $10 into an $18 pot.

I wanted the others OUT so I would be heads-up with the kamakaze all-in raiser. I figured that I had up to ten outs for the main pot, four to a gutshot, plus three pair cards each for my seven or nine. I was putting the limp-reraising-kamakaze all-in guy on two overcards at this point. Notice I was betting into a dry side pot. I really did not want to take on the other three players here, as I would have only a gutshot and a very sketchy weak overcard, and I wouldn't be getting the odds on the sidepot to draw to anything. Any reasonable bet and I would have folded. Although I would of course still be competing for the main pot, any other players still in for the main pot reduced my chances of winning it, plus could very well force me to call bets for the side pot, as well as the main pot. However, against the all-in player, I would be getting infinite odds to draw against him for the main pot, with up to ten outs times two cards to come. Nothing was getting him out of the main pot, as he was all-in. Hence my reasoning for wanting the rest of the players out.

As it happened, a four of clubs hit the turn, and a seven of hearts hit the river. My pair of sevens beat the kamakaze player's AQo.

Now I thought this was a good play, with good reasoning on my part.

However, maybe I'm just a moron.

You decide!

al