Raising a bluff

[boxedIn]

This might belong in the poker theory forum, however I'm not posting there because I'm looking for a more practical answer pertaining to my normal game (small stakes NL).

Anyway, the proposition is one that comes up often for me. I'll use a particular example to illustrate. Say you have 77 in the SB. Two players limp, you complete and the BB checks.

The flop is something like JTT, two spades. You bet out $4 to see where you're at. BB and one limper folds, while the button min-raises you to $4.

From watching this player (and just a general online player), you're almost positive he wouldn't do this with a T. However, it is entirely possible that he would do this with a weak J (like say, J9) or a draw like say, KQ or two spades.

My question is, should you raise these bets? A small portion of the time, the person will turn over a T and you'll be far behind, but we're ignoring that for now. Also, let us assume that due to your image at the table or the button's behavior, you are almost gauranteed to get a call from any J. However, you are fairly likely to get a fold from a draw. Also, not raising and simply check/calling on any non-scare cards gives the button the opportunity to draw on you and hit. Even if he has something that's a pretty stupid bluff, like say A9, no spades (which, incidentally, this player had in this hand).

The problem is that there is a very thin line here. If you are fairly certain of your read, you should win this the majority of the time. This problem is purposefully set up so that you are out of position -- this is the major situation where I run into this problem of someone who I'm almost positive is using position to attempt a bluff, but I'm not entirely certain.

Re-Raising and folding to a re-raise of that bet is what my intuition says is the correct answer. However, what happens if you re-raise and button simply calls. Now you are in the awkward position of attempting to decide between the button having a very strong hand (a T), a weak hand that might fold to a bet (say J9), or a drawing hand. Reraising very strongly might be able to take away those last two options, however you are opening yourself up to the possibility of a T destroying you, or, alternately, someone with AJ thinking you're overplaying a draw and calling you.

This is giving a wide range of options, but what I'm saying is that there appears to be a very thin line between the valuing of a weak hand that you're fairly sure is ahead at this point, but is quite susceptible to you being wrong or to draws. If your hand was a strong draw, then you would be more able to bet strongly as you're gaining enough fold equity and draw equity that a bad call (with AJ) should be punished. However I'm at a loss for what to do here -- lately I've been checking/calling on the presumption that raising will only get hands that beat me to call, however I've been right the vast majority of times and lots of them have caught up to me with something like Ax trying to "put a move" on me.

And the worst move is folding, I think. You could make a strong argument for it, however you're opening yourself up to being "outplayed" whenever you're out of position, and you're folding when you are fairly confident (but not extremely) that you're a favorite. Intuitively speaking, folding when you're fairly sure you're a favorite cannot be correct.

So, this is kind of a rambling post but hopefully the gist of it is still there. I'm curious to know if this situation is encountered often and how people deal with it.