DECISION POINT: You are in a live tournament with blinds at 200/400 and a 400 big blind ante. The action folds to you in the Cutoff with A♠A♥ and you raise to 1,000. The Button, Small Blind, and Big Blind all call. The flop comes 10♦4♣4♠. Both Blinds check and you make a 2,000 continuation bet. The Button folds, the Small Blind calls, and the Big Blind folds. The Small Blind checks the 2♥ turn and action is on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: After we continuation bet into 3 players and get called on the flop, we should generally only attempt one more street of value betting with our overpair. Against specific players that we have historical data on, we can bet all three postflop streets for value. However, against an unknown opponent, we should only attempt to get value on two streets given this multiway flop.

Being in position gives us the ability to control the size of the pot and potentially induce bets from worse hands on the river when we check. In addition, betting the turn puts more pressure on our opponent, since they face the implied threat of another bet on the river. This makes them more likely to fold worse one pair hands to a turn bet versus a river bet (when the turn is checked).

For these reasons, our default line in this hand is to check behind on the turn with the intention of calling a river bet or betting when our opponent checks. This allows us to maximize value with our pocket aces by keeping our opponent’s hand range wide and getting to a controlled showdown.

Checking the turn is the best play.