DECISION POINT: ​You are in the middle stages of a multi-table tournament with blinds at 500/1,000 and a 1,000 big blind ante. The action folds to a Middle Position player, who you know to be a very good player and implements solid strategy, and they raise to 2,500. Everyone else folds, you 3-bet with 6♦7♦ to 10,000 from the Big Blind, and MP2 calls. The flop comes J♦2♥Q♥ and action is on you. What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are in the middle stages of a multi-table tournament after the big blind ante has been introduced. We are dealt 6♦7♦ in the Big Blind and everyone folds to the player in MP2 who opens to 2,500. We know this player to be a very good, tough player who plays solid ranges with appropriate betting and bluffing frequencies. The remaining players in the hand fold and action is on us in the Big Blind.

With 76s versus a 2.5x open from Middle Position and 50BB effective stacks our strategy is mixed between flat calling and 3-betting as a part of a polarized 3-betting strategy as the out of position player. Using the card suits as a method to randomize our raising frequency in this spot, we 3-bet to 10,000 total preflop and the MP2 player calls.

The flop is J♦2♥Q♥ and action is on us. While it may seem logical and natural to c-bet every flop after you use the larger 4x 3-bet sizing vs a single caller, it is critical to recognize that our range here is quite polarized while the MP2 player’s range is quite linear.

This difference in range construction means that flops like A-8-4 and K-9-5 will be much better for our range than MP2. More coordinated flops like T-9-5 and two tone connected flops, such as the J2Q with two hearts flop in this hand, are much better for our opponent’s range. While we should be continuation betting some portion of the time in this spot, we need to be cautious to only c-bet with hands that have some sort of reasonable equity.

If we take a deeper analysis and run this spot through a solver the result recommends checking 95% of the time in this spot, so our backdoor flush draw doesn’t quite make the cut. With a hand such as AdTd we could make a more compelling case for betting here with the added benefit of a backdoor flush draw, a gut shot draw, and by blocking the hands MP2 would call with here like AQ/AJ/QTs.

In this case however, we don’t have a strong enough hand to push equity by betting even though our range is uncapped on this flop as the preflop 3-bettor.

Checking is the best play.