Pocket pair vs. flop with lower two pair

[Borax]

Example:

You hold TT or JJ and flop comes 997.
Many players will bet the pot on the flop with a hand like A7 or 87 here.
Still there is a possible 999 set hanging around. So, someone bet the pot before you and there is one or no other callers before you play.
How should this best be played

TT and JJ is not very confident hands for me. If anyone could explain with details I would be happy

[Greedo017]

me personally i play as weakly as possible and call him down as long as his bets stay reasonable.

[SpceManSpif]

I agree. As long as the person keeps his bet reasonable i'm going to just call and see what happens on the turn and maybe the river.

[dalecooper]

One of two ways:

1) just keep calling unless he goes nuts. If he doesn't have the set himself, he may interpret this as slowplay on your part, and you get to go all the way for cheap as he nervously makes small bets.

If he escalates the bet meaningfully at some point, he probably has the trips.

2) raise on the flop. If he doesn't have the set he'll fold. If he does he'll probably raise. If he just calls he may have the set or may not (depending how good of a player he is, and how he reads you)... in which case, go to check/call mode as in #1.

I'm honestly not sure which of these methods is more profitable. I would tend to go with #2 when fewer players are in the hand - 3 or less including you. Particularly if you raised pre-flop and the board pair is a low one, say 8s or below. If there are more people playing, and/or the pot was unraised before the flop, I'd tend to be more passive with the hand.

[Borax]

If I raise the flop and he calls and then I check, he could just bluff me out of the hand....?

[Rondavu]

I think the worst place to be on a low paired board is middle position. Say a guy in early position has A7 on the 997 board and bets strong. You have JJ so you raise, and then some guy in late position smooth calls the 9 or re-raises. Bad stuff. If I'm in early position I can check without the nuts and watch what develops. One guy bets strong, another raises and see ya, I'm outa here without losing a dime. Late position speaks for itself in that regard. This is definately one situation where you can get caught in the middle... so to speak. If you think about it, a low paired board like this is a natural action hand. Especially with a one gapped 7 filling the pair up for a possible straight draw, or if two of them are suited. In an action hand, you don't want to get sandwiched between a pissing contest.

[dalecooper]

If I raise the flop and he calls and then I check, he could just bluff me out of the hand....?

Yes, it's possible. There's no easy answer. At some point here you have to make a read and trust it. Or decide it's not worth the money for what is in effect a pretty marginal hand.

[Borax]

I ended up folding my JJ to a TT6 flop because there was two others in the hand. Then it turned out one had TT66 (A6s) and the other was bluffing hard and lost half his stack to the TT66. Too much action for me to stay in I thought, but I would have won the hand.

[dalecooper]

I've changed my mind. If there's a pair on the flop and you don't have the set yourself, fold immediately. Don't even check, just fold. Because they've ALWAYS got it. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

(bad day, sorry)

[ekillian]

I play that pretty agressively. Why? Because I played it aggressively preflop. If I get an underflop I'm coming out with a continuation bet. There are a lot of situations where you can even reraise if you're continuation bet is raised, but you'll have to know your player to do that. It's a good flop if you thinned the field enough preflop.