| yeah, space, with that stack and two limpers it's a tricky spot, i agree.
500 is indeed the standard raise here, of 3xbb plus 1 bb for each limper. the problem is that you don't really have enough chips for the standard.
500/1300 is about 40% of your stack. another rule of thumb often used is that if you're going to make a bet that's 40% of your chips, you should just move in. with the raise you made, if you got only one caller (and it was one of the limpers) the pot would have been 1250, and you'd only have 800 left. so you wouldn't have enough to make even a headsup opponent fold, necessarily.
as my least favorite tv poker guy, mike sexton, likes to say, "middle pairs are the hardest hand in NL texas holdem to play." and i think this hand shows why. folding seems pretty weak. pushing woulda gotten you broke also. but maybe then you wouldna gotten called by 78 and even the AK (depending on the order of the hands, i forgot). maybe folding is right at this stage...if you get a caller you know you can't be better than a coinflip.
i love strat threads too. don't tell anyone, but i get tired of chip-related threads sometimes. | 
