Medium strength hands in the blinds in a limped pot

Lately I've come to realize that I might have a leak in my game. When I am in the SB or BB with hands like 77,88,KQo, and AJo I have been split between raising or completing. I am pretty sure I have the best hand but I know I will be OOP the rest of the hand. What is my best move here? Does more limpers mean I should be raising more often? More often against a single limper? Am I better off just seeing a flop? 10nl FR I play 100bb or bigger stack at all times.

FWIW, I play 6-max almost exclusively these days, but I think what follows still applies.

I think it depends on the players that have limped. Are all the limpers loose passives that will call down and pay off your monsters? Are they all TAG and will put a lot of pressure on you when you hit TPGK or an overpair and lead out on the flop?

With a TAG table in which I think I can get some of the limpers to fold and to isolate, I usually raise in this spot. This gives me more information about what kinds and ranges of hands I will be up against, which is especially important being OOP and against stronger opponents. By raising, you can also represent a bigger hand than what you have -- it could be a monster like KK-AA-AK because they would be played the same as your marginal hand in this spot.

With a loose passive table with people that will call down every street with middle pair or gutshot draw, or if there are players that will get their stacks in with top pair any kicker, I'm probably completing with no raise to see a flop and hoping to get paid off by one of these stations. Raising is unlikely to get anyone off their hands preflop, and your marginal holdings won't often hold up against 4-5 limping stations. On the rare instances when you DO flop a monster, the limping stations WILL pay you off postflop regardless of how big the pot is preflop, so IMO limping is better in this situation.

Your own table image will also tie into this, since you will likely get many more callers if you are perceived to be pretty loose. The above is written with a fairly TAG image for hero in mind.

So a looser player should raise, because he has a better hand than is probably percieved by his opponents? Or call, because he will get too many callers? Just by retracing my questions, I feel that the answer is raise if they will be calling me lighter anyway. Does that sound right?

Just posting on here again trying to get more responses on this topic. I still feel kinda lost with hands like 7s and 8s. Iv been completing with a lot of limpers and raising against a single limper. Mainly because i feel it's really hard to be ahead in multiway pots with these hands, and I end up just set mining basically.

Sorry for not responding earlier -- I saw the post in my subscriptions and meant to type something up but got distracted and forgot to do so!

If you have a loose image and are at a table full of other loose passives that will call you, 77/88 do not hold up well against 3-4 others in the same pot, especially out of position. It's better to do as you are doing -- limp/complete it and hope to flop a set or with a suited connector to flop nuts or a good draw.

With a loose image at a table full of limping TAGs, raising might get a few of them to fold but if your image is super loose then you might just get a lot of callers (which is bad in this case). If you have a TAG image, a raise will probably get a lot of the limpers to fold so you can isolate and then more easily take down the pot postflop with a cbet, and it is much easier to know where you are in the hand when isolating down to one other player.

I think this is generally the best way to play medium/small pocket pairs in this spot. I think the reason for a raise in this spot isn't so much a value bet because you think you are ahead, but rather to take the dead money offered by the limper and to get information if they decide to make a call after the raise.

Again though, if the single limper is a loose calling station that does cbet on occasion then it may be better actually to just complete rather than raise, because it's rare to hit a flop with mid/low pocket pairs that we can feel really confident about (plenty of overs to worry about). If we do hit our set or monster, even though we limped preflop the loose calling station might call us down light anyways which will build the pot when we bet each street.