Home Game Hand: What to do?

[Lottery Larry]

"Dealt 8 8 UTG. Raise to $.50. Folds to BB who raises to $2. UTG is tight, and not as agressive as the rest of the table, but I wouldn't call them weak"

Either you're an egotist, or you meant to say the BB is tight... not UTG. Or aren't you the one holding the eights in UTG spot?

Was there any significant doubt in your mind that you'd be facing a big pair here? Were you thinking AK also? Still basically a coinflip. Dump the hand.

[Moozh]

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A 10BB raise with 200BB starting stacks is equivalent to a 5BB raise with 100BB starting stacks

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This is absolutely wrong. Assuming your only goal is to steal the blinds (although here we know it probably won't happen). If the blinds add up to .75bb, you need to steal them successfully 7 out of 8 times to profit with a 5bb raise. You need to steal them 14 of 15 times with a 10bb raise. In essence, since you're playing to win half as much, you need to win twice as often. Think of this another way. If you were to suddenly halve the blinds for a game, but you knew everyone else would play the same, you would want to halve the number of hands you play if you plan on raising the same dollar amount. Small blinds with loose players calls for a very very tight strategy because:

1) Your big hands will be payed off
2) You can afford to wait longer for better hands because the blinds cost less each orbit.
3) You will be risking proportionally more money if you're making oversized bets, thus you can't affort to lose as often.

I understand that this game is more about having fun than playing optimally, but try to understand why people are saying raising 88 UTG for 10bb is not a good idea. If the game requires a raise of that much, you should be playing much much tighter if you want to play seriously.