DECISION POINT: You are in the early stages of a Tournament with blinds at 50/100 and a Middle Position player opens to 3BBs. The Hijack calls, you call from the Cutoff with 2♠2♥, the Button calls, and both Blinds call. The 2♦6♥10♥ flop is checked to you and you bet 2/3rd pot. The Small Blind calls and the other players fold. The turn is the 8♥. The Small Blind leads the turn for half pot and action is on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: After flopping a set in a multiway pot, we bet and are called by a single opponent in the small blind. The turn completes a possible flush and our opponent leads into us for a half-pot sized bet.

Given the multiway flop and the line our opponent chose to take (check-call), flushes are a large portion of our opponent’s range. However, one of the reasons sets are such powerful hands is that they have a redraw potential for a full house or quads.

If we call this bet, any 2, 6, T or 8 on the river will give us either quads or a full house. Thus, if our opponent has a flush, we have 10 outs to improve to a winning hand.

Using the Rule of 2, we have a 20% chance (10 x 2) of improving on the river. If our opponent always has a flush, direct pot odds of 4-1 or better would make this a profitable call without taking into account any potential river betting. In this case, since our opponent bet half-pot, we are getting 3-1 pot odds.

We are likely to win at least an additional 2100 chips on the river on average when we improve our hand, so we have the implied odds necessary to make this call even if our opponent always has a flush. In addition, our opponent may not have a flush, in which case we often still have the best hand and our opponent may check on the river.

Calling this bet with the intention of getting all-in on any 2, 6, T or 8 river card or folding to further action (or checking behind) on non-pairing rivers will show a profit in the long run.

Calling is the best play.