DECISION POINT: You are in the middle stages of a $1,500 buy-in large field tournament in Las Vegas and have most of the table covered except for the Cutoff. You raise to 4,500 (the table standard) from Under the Gun with A♠A♣ and get called by the Cutoff, Button, Small Blind and Big Blind. Both Blinds check the A♦9♣T♥ flop and with top set action is on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing a $1,500 buy-in large field summer series event. It’s still in the middle stages with 1,000/2,000 blinds and a 2,000 big blind ante. We have 60BBs and most of the table covered with everyone but one player having 30-40BBs.

We are dealt black aces UTG and make a standard table raise to 4,500. It is folded to the Cutoff who calls, and then the Button and both Blinds also call. The flop is A♦9♣T♥ and we flopped top set. Both Blinds check to us and it’s our turn to act.

Typically we don’t want to slowplay in big, multiway pots because when five players see the flop it’s very likely multiple players connected in some way. With AA specifically, there is some merit to checking and slowplaying this flop as we can account for three of the aces in the deck and if our opponents hold 9x or Tx we can win a huge pot by letting them catch a second pair or three of a kind.

That being said, most of the 9x and Tx hands that saw this flop are likely suited combinations, so 75% of them will have backdoor flush and straight draws as well. So if we size our bet down on the flop, as we should be doing in multiway pots as a default, there is a good chance many of these 9x and Tx combos will continue vs a smaller sizing and we can start to build a pot and push our equity advantage.

It can be tempting to bet larger as there are many broadway draws out there, but that would be a mistake.

It’s very difficult to price out draws in big, multiway pots as players are often getting better implied odds with multiple opponents seeing the flop, and a single caller will give everyone else in the hand compelling odds to continue with drawing hands. Even when our opponent has a draw we will hit a full house (or quads) by the river nearly 33% of the time.

Betting around 8,500 gives us a lot of flexibility on different turn cards and begins to build the pot.

Betting small (around one third of the pot) is the best play.