DECISION POINT: You are playing a deepstack tournament and have noticed your tablemates have solid preflop fundamentals. The blinds are 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big blind ante. Over the first 5–6 levels, you've built your 25,000 starting stack up to 40,000 chips. Action folds to the Hijack, who raises to 2,200. The Cutoff folds, and you defend from the Button with K♠Q♠. The Blinds fold. The flop comes T♦4♠3♣, the Hijack c-bets 4,500 and action is on you — what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are in the middle stages of a deeper stacked tournament during the summer in Las Vegas. The blinds are 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big blind ante. The table is playing a relatively solid preflop game, lacking a lot of the loose preflop calls you typically see in daily tournaments. We’ve had an uneventful but productive first 5-6 levels, slowly grinding our 25,000 starting stack up to 40,000 chips.

We are dealt KsQs on the Button. Action folds around to the Hijack player, who makes a table standard first-in raise to 2,200 chips. The Cutoff folds, and action is on us. With the effective stack at around 25 BBs moving all-in over the top of the raise becomes a viable option, and when we are much deeper (100+ big blinds), we often want to be doing some 3-betting as well. At 40 BB effective stacks facing players who are likely to be using solid preflop ranges, we largely want to call with KQ in this scenario as part of our Button Defense strategy.

We call, and both Blinds fold. The flop is Td4s3c, and the Hijack bets 4,500 into a 6,900 chip pot. One of the key components to playing solid Button Defense strategy is that we must continue frequently postflop, especially on boards that connect with our range, as is the case in this hand. Taking a closer look at this spot in a solver, the results indicate we are only supposed to fold one-third of the hands that we called with preflop on this board.

One good heuristic to apply in these postflop defense spots is that any time we’re in position as a part of Button Defense and we flop three to a flush and three to a straight with at least one overcard to the board, we have a compelling reason to continue.

For example, J9s with a backdoor flush here calls, while 98s with a backdoor flush folds. It is also critical to be mindful of our opponent's bet size. If the Hijack had c-bet one-third pot, we would continue with more hands. Facing a larger sizing such as bet full pot (or even overbetting the pot), hands with good equity such as 2 overcards and a backdoor draw become folds.

By floating in this spot, or calling postflop in position with a plan to potentially take the pot away on a later street, we create additional opportunities to realize equity. Not only can we win the pot when our hand improves, the king or queen gives us likely the best hand, and any spade, jack, or nine improves our equity on the turn, but we also can win when our opponent checks the turn and bets to take the pot.

Folding in spots like this too frequently is a common leak and is critical to build confidence for following up floats with prudent aggression postflop. In order to build these skills, it's best to practice using a tool such as the WPT GTO Trainer to gain a feel for navigating these postflop scenarios.

Calling is the best play.