I played this hand against a guy that I had beaten up pretty bad a couple of times with an overpair and top pair top kicker so I had to think he had a little respect for my play. I three bet with 77 because the table wasn't likely to call behind me making a mulitway pot and I wanted to take charge of the hand and try to get it heads up with my middle pair. Well I got it heads up but he 4 bets me. When someone four bets at this level it MOST of the time means BIG POCKET PAIR so I knew I would need some help. If he would have only called my three bet and bet into me on the flop I would have folded fearing that I was facing an ace big kicker but with the cap I knew that he either had AAA or he didn't have an ace at all. With 10.5 bets in the pot I chose to raise his flop bet and find out and he quietly mucked his hand which I am positive had me beat. This is one reason among many that I will just call a three bet of my raise when I hold a big overpair as by capping you may as well flip your cards up on the table to the astute player. The extra bet lost from the lack of a preflop cap is usually easily made up for by having played the hand more deceptively post flop.

Game #862294354: Texas Hold'em Limit ($1/$2) - 2005/09/10 - 19:24:36 (GMT)
Table "Monarchos" Seat 9 is the button.
Seat 1: Eggnoodle ($19.12 in chips)
Seat 2: VeNSe ($9.50 in chips)
Seat 3: NORTE ($160.83 in chips)
Seat 4: Necro99 ($95 in chips)
Seat 5: hackermik ($49 in chips)
Seat 6: pavlov ($49 in chips)
Seat 7: majestyk4 ($60.75 in chips)
Seat 8: pokerowl ($32 in chips)
Seat 9: JavaDuke ($73.25 in chips)
Seat 10: FakeBoobs ($48 in chips)
FakeBoobs: posts small blind $0.50
Eggnoodle: posts big blind $1
----- HOLE CARDS -----
dealt to majestyk4 [7h 7d]
VeNSe: folds
NORTE: folds
Necro99: folds
hackermik: folds
pavlov: raises $2
majestyk4: raises $3
pokerowl: folds
JavaDuke: folds
FakeBoobs: folds
Eggnoodle: folds
pavlov: raises $2
majestyk4: calls $1
----- FLOP ----- [5h Ac 9h]
pavlov: bets $1
majestyk4: raises $2
pavlov: folds
Returned uncalled bets $1 to majestyk4
majestyk4: doesn't show hand
majestyk4 collected $11 from Main pot

thanks for analysis, piers. the kind of info you're talking about is very subtle (at least to me) but very valuable.

When it is not going to be HU I usually just go ahead and cap it off as you might not get the chance to extract from those others players after the flop. I am not a huge fan of capping with AK in a multiway pot because more often than not alot of your outs are sitting in the hands of other folks.