7♥6♥ Vs the Button, what do you do here?
DECISION POINT: In a $2-5 game the action folds to you in Middle Position and you make the standard table raise to $15 with 7♥6♥. It folds to the Button who calls and both Blinds fold. The flop comes K♦9♣Q♣ and action is on you, what do you do here?
PRO ANSWER: We are playing in a cash game with a 3BB standard raise size. It folds to us in MP2 with 7h6h and we raise to $15 (3BB). It folds to the Button who calls and everyone else folds. The flop is Kd9cQc and action is on us.
This is the type of flop that connects very well with a Button calling range. There are many combinations of Kx/Qx/9x in our opponent’s hand range as well as many draws including club draws, Tx, and Jx, that are all the types of hands that our opponent would call with preflop.
In this particular situation we can anticipate our opponent will continue vs a c-bet a vast majority of the time on this board. The hands we want to continuation bet here are going to be hands that can at the very least turn some sort of significant equity which means we aren’t just giving up on the turn too often.
Continued below...
If we had some sort of backdoor draw or additional equity we could make a case for betting in this spot. We can consider making a continuation bet against opponents who call with a lot of Axs and pocket pair type of hands preflop and then play very straightforward postflop, rarely floating as a bluff and only continuing when they flop significant equity.
Unless we are up against that specific type of opponent who calls with spec hands preflop, rarely floats, and only continues when they have it, we are unlikely to be able to profitably fire again on the turn. Our opponent on the Button is going to be calling too frequently to make a continuation bet profitable here, so absent some sort of very specific read this is a good spot to just cut our losses at our preflop raise.
Success in cash game poker comes just as much from minimizing our losses as it does maximizing our wins.
Checking is the best play.
How would you play it?
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In a Cash Game with 100 big blind stacks, you open raise from MP2 to 3BBs and the Button calls.
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