Decision Point: In a Tournament, a Middle Position player calls and you raise with A♣K♦. The Button calls, and the MP player calls. The Flop comes K♠9♠8♠. MP1 checks, you C-Bet. The Button calls and MP player folds. The Turn is 4♦. Action is on you, what do you do here?

Pro Answer: After one player limped from Middle Position, we raised with AK and were called by the Button and the limper. We continuation bet on the monotone spade flop and were called by the player on the button. On the turn, we must decide between checking or betting

Typically speaking, one pair hands such as top pair, top kicker, drop in value significantly on coordinated boards in multiway pots. The more chips that go in on these types of boards, the less likely one pair is to be the best hand.

In other words, these hands suffer from reverse implied odds. You should be very capable of getting away from hands like this when stacks are deeper, since deeper stacks allow a greater opportunity for reverse implied odds to take effect.

In this hand, however, stacks are very shallow. We had less than 30 big blinds to start the hand preflop. After betting the flop, we only have around ¾ of the pot left in our stack. Even though our opponent has us beat some of the time, there are still enough one pair hands and/or draws in their range on the turn.

We should not fold this hand and checking can give a free card to our opponent’s draws. We should bet to deny them this opportunity, and since we have much less than a pot sized bet left, we should move all-in on the turn.

Moving all-in for our remaining chips is the best play.