DECISION POINT: In the middle stages of a large field tournament you are in the Big Blind with 50BBs and the rest of the players at the table are between 30-60BBs. The blinds are 500/1,000 with a 1,000 ante. Action folds to the Button who raises 2,300, the Small Blind calls, and you 3-Bet to 10,300 with K♥Q♥. The Button calls, the Small Blind folds, and we see a flop of J♠9♣8♥.

Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are just entering the middle stages of a large field multi-table tournament with blinds of 500/1,000 and a 1,000 big blind ante. Stack sizes at the table range from 30-60 big blinds and we are in the Big Blind with 50BBs to start off the hand. We are dealt KhQh in the Big Blind, everyone folds to the Button who raises to 2,300 chips, and the Small Blind calls.

Many players defer to calling the raise far too often in this scenario instead of going for the squeeze play. The optimal squeezing range against a Button open and Small Blind call with 50BB effective stacks contains roughly 12% of hands, however often players mistakenly default to just calling because they’re always closing the action and get to see a flop.

The Button should be opening a very wide range by default (including over 50% of all hands) and the Small Blind is unlikely to have any really strong hands as they capped their range by flat calling preflop. If we elect to just call in this spot and head to the flop 3 ways, we will be intentionally deciding to play a pot out of position with a hand as strong as KQs that is well ahead of both opponent’s ranges.

This is a great spot to squeeze with our particular holding and we make it 10,300. The Button calls and the Small Blind folds. The flop is Js9c8h and action is on us. As the preflop 3-bettor we should be continuation betting on many flop textures.

After taking a closer look at what we believe the Button’s likely calling range is in this spot we see that it includes a lot of middle pairs, suited broadway cards, some off suit broadway cards, as well as some suited Ax combinations. That range actually connects very well with this flop, which makes betting problematic. When analyzing this spot in a solver we see the Big Blind is checking nearly 70% of its overall range here, including hands like JJ/99/QTs so that we have slow plays as well as for balance.

While the recommended action in this spot is to check, it’s important to note that we have some portions of our range that can continue against flop aggression. We can call profitably facing a 25% pot sized bet from the Button, and if they go as big as half pot we could potentially turn our hand into a semi-bluff and check-raise. With two overcards, an inside straight draw, and backdoor flush draw we have enough equity to continue in most instances against a reasonably sized flop bet.

If we choose to c-bet into a narrow, condensed range like the Button has on the flop our bet will get called quite frequently and set up very difficult turn spots. We may even be forced to fold a hand with a lot of equity when facing a raise.

Checking keeps our opponent’s range wide and leaves open the option of sometimes check-raising to maximize fold equity. Betting is definitely still +EV, however checking will have a higher expectation in the long run against solid, aggressive players.

Checking is the best play.