Quote Originally Posted by Warpe
Is anyone limping here preflop?
yes, or a modest raise to pot build. Protecting here is a little meh/ugly for me.

Care to elaborate? What kind of hands are limp calling a 7BB raise pre flop?

JJ is not clearly more likely to be behind on this flop than QQ-AA, you think betting all of them is horrible too?
Half pot achieves nothing. Any jack calls, any spade draw calls perhaps even a few mid pps call too perhaps (its party remember)
Betting on the flop bloats the pot on later streets when we might find the pot odds difficult to fold to even if obvious draws dont complete and we cant be sure our hand is good to start with.
Check/call lead turn or check then lead turn is a scary line in most circumstances. It shows we like our hand so we might get an overcall from a poor/average player who doesnt understand our line but it also prevents us from losing a lot to a jack as they want to raise and play a big pot. Sure, it gives a flush draw the chance to push us off the pot but our line is still quite scary considering we raised preflop; a flush draw could be drawing dead.

Betting the flop just makes an already bloated pot get out of control. With all the callers this might as well be a limped pot.