A♠K♠ on the Flop, what do you do here?
Decision Point: In a Tournament, it folds around to the Hijack who raises. You reraise with A♠K♠. It folds around to the Hijack who calls. The Flop comes A♥7♠10♠. The Hijack bets. Action is on you, what do you do here?
Pro Answer: After 3-betting preflop and getting called, we see a flop heads up and in position. The flop gives us top pair and the nut flush draw, a very strong holding in this situation. Our lone opponent leads into us.
Should we call or raise?
Continued below...
Several factors make this a good spot to just call. We are in position, heads up, and hold a strong hand. In addition, stack sizes are such that we can get all the chips in on the river with standard betting. No raise is required in order to get stacks in as long as there are normal sized bets on the turn and river.
If we choose to raise this flop bet, we will often fold out many of the hands that have very little equity against us and that we want to continue in the hand.
We also force bluffs to fold, instead of allowing them to potentially fire again on later streets. Since we hold two key cards that connect with this flop, raising will cause our opponent to often fold.
Calling in position keeps our opponent in with many hands that we have beat, which allows us to make more chips in the long run than raising.
Calling is the best play.
How would you play it?
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