DECISION POINT: You are 3 players from the money bubble in an online tournament where blinds are 300/600 with a 75 ante. A Middle Position player raises to 1,200 and it folds to you on the Button. You reraise to 3,000 with A♣J♣, both Blinds fold and your opponent calls. MP1 checks the T♣7♣Q♦ flop, you bet 5,000 and they call. Your opponent checks the 9♥ turn and action is on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are three players away from the money bubble in an online tournament and are dealt AJ suited on the Button. A Middle Position player raises to 1,200 and action folds to us. We decide to raise 2.5x to 3,000 and get called by the original raiser.

Our opponent checks Tc7cQd flop and with a combo draw we continuation bet 5,000 and get called. The 9h turn brings us additional outs and our opponent checks.

This is a good opportunity to execute a turn second barrel all-in with our big draw. We saw a flop heads up and can credibly represent a big pair or a set. Given that there are only three players to go until the money bubble, our all-in shove should create plenty of fold equity. In other words, we should be able to cause our opponent to fold a reasonably high percentage of the time.

Big draws are ideal hands with which to make these sorts of moves, since when we fail to cause our opponent to fold their hand we can still win by hitting our hand on the river. We will often get folds from many of our opponent's one-pair hands as this move will threaten their tournament life.

Note the importance of bet sizing when planning ahead for future streets. On the flop, we bet around ⅔ of the pot in order to set up a logical turn shove amount of slightly less than the pot. Had the flop bet sizing been a smaller sizing to something like ⅓ the pot, there would be more than the pot left in effective stacks and a shove on the turn would be overbet sizing.

These are the types of plays that winning tournament players are willing to make on the bubble. Winning players may sometimes bust out on the bubble due to aggressive play, however when this strategy is successful they tend to have larger stack sizes that can lead to deeper runs and more final tables.

Moving all-in as a semi-bluff is the best play.