DECISION POINT: You are the shortest stack at the table in day 2 of the WSOP Monster Stack with blinds at 1,500/3,000 and a 3,000 big blind ante. You minraise from UTG+1 with A♠J♣ and get called by the MP1 player and the Big Blind. The Big Blind checks the J♦5♥2♣ flop, you c-bet 12,000, and only MP1 calls. The turn is 7♥ and action is on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing the first hand of day 2 of the Monster Stack event at the World Series of Poker. The blinds are 1,500/3,000 with a 3,000 big blind ante. We are the shortest stack at the table with 25 big blinds. We are UTG+1 and are dealt AsJc. The UTG player folds and action is on us.

With antes in play and a small standard opening raise size, AJo is well within our opening hand range from early position. We open to 6,000 and the player to our immediate left calls. Everyone else folds except the Big Blind who also calls. The flop is Jd5h2c.

With 22,500 in the middle and just under 70,000 remaining in our stack, the stack to pot ratio is right around 3. With a low SPR and holding top pair top kicker, we are going to be going with this hand unless there is just tremendous action behind us. The question is, how do we extract the most value out of our opponents when our hand is best.

The MP1 player to our immediate left likely has a very condensed range when calling the raise preflop. They wouldn’t have flat called with big hands like QQ+/AK, as they do not want to encourage a multiway pot with those hands and are well ahead of our range.

The most likely candidates for MP1 to call in this spot are mid pairs, suited connectors, and broadway cards. This means that the portion of their range that we beat and are likely to get action from are Jx hands and middle pocket pairs like 88/99.

While MP1 is likely to continue with some hands like these we are ahead of currently, however there are a lot of potential scare cards on future streets so a continuation bet is definitely in order. We decide to bet 12,000, MP1 calls, and the Big Blind folds. The turn is the 7h.

If we had a read that our opponent was capable of floating extremely wide a compelling case can be made for checking. Many of our opponent’s floating hands such as Ace high or backdoor flush draws are going to give up when we bet again. Some of these combinations are also likely to bet if we check, however given that we raised in early position and continuation bet on a dry board the action is more likely to go check/check on the turn.

Without a read that our opponent is capable of floating wide in this spot, it is more likely they have a made hand. Since the turn 7 is more or less a blank (unless they specifically held 77) we’re still looking to target the 88/99 and Jx portion of MP1’s range.

Those hands are more likely to call a bet on the turn than on the river that potentially may bring a scare card, so we should fire a turn second bullet and size down to around 33-40% of the pot.

Betting is the best play.