DECISION POINT: You are in the early stages of a $600 WSOP multi-day event with blinds at 300/600 and a 600 big blind ante. Most stacks are in the 50BB range and you have no reads on your tablemates. The preflop action folds to the Button who raises to 1,300, the Small Blind folds, and you defend in the Big Blind with 6♠3♠. You check the K♠7♣5♣ flop, the Button c-bets 1,200, and action is back on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing a $600 buy-in multi-day event at the World Series of Poker. It is early in the tournament and we’ve just moved tables a few hands ago so we have no significant reads on the opposing players. Most of the stacks are in the 50 big blind range. The blinds are 300/600 with a 600 big blind ante and we are dealt 6♠3♠ in the Big Blind. Everyone folds to the Button who opens to 1,300, the Small Blind folds, and action is on us.

With the big blind ante in play we are getting very favorable pot odds to continue from the Big Blind. While we should fold some of our weakest hands, the defending range should be very wide when getting this price, and calling with any two suited cards is a must. If we’re folding more than 20% of our total hands in this scenario that means we are folding way too frequently against this raise size in general.

We do elect to call, and the flop is K♠7♣5♣ bringing us a backdoor flush draw and an inside straight draw. This is a flop that favors the preflop raiser’s range, so we will be checking 100% of our hands by default in this situation. We check and the Button bets 1,200 into a 3,500 pot. While our hand might not seem like much with a gutshot straight draw and backdoor flush draw, we are getting nearly 4:1 on our call and our opponent should have a very wide hand range in this situation.

With three cards to a straight and three to a flush in a Big Blind defense situation against a small bet and a wide range such as this one, we should be alert that this is potentially a good scenario to check-raise. Our opponent is likely betting a super wide range on this board, and if the Button does call our check-raise we can potentially improve our hand to a likely winner and will pick up additional equity on some turn cards that will allow us to continue semi-bluffing.

Looking at this spot in a solver after the hand, the output indicates a split between calling (around 60% of the time) and raising (around 40% of the time). While our play shouldn’t always mimic a solver, understanding what the “optimal” play is based on pure theory is a good starting point. Deciding which option is best in your specific game will often come down to tendencies for each player.

If we had opponent specific information that the player on the Button played tighter ranges, calling would often be the preferred option since the implied odds of hitting our straight would be higher and our check-raise would induce folds less frequently. Facing opponents who open more than they should from the Button or continuation bet with a higher frequency than the solver suggests (which is 65% in this situation), we can adjust by check-raising.

The one clear mistake in this spot would be to fold. If we are considering folding in this situation we are likely proceeding postflop too conservatively when defending the Big Blind and would benefit greatly from tools such as the WPT GTO Trainer to better familiarize ourselves with these postflop spots.

Calling or raising are both correct plays.