Decision Point: In a Tournament, it folds to a Middle Position player who calls. It folds to you on the Button with 10♣8♣, and you call. The Small Blind raises and the Big Blind folds. MP1 calls and you call. The Flop comes J♦9♥7♦. The Small Blind bets and MP1 folds. Action is on you, what do you do here?

Pro Answer: After limping behind the initial limper with a speculative hand, we are able to call the preflop raise of the Small Blind and flop a straight.

The player in the Small Blind bets into the field and the Middle Position player folds, leaving us with the decision of whether to call or raise with our straight.

There are a couple factors that make raising a better option than calling. First, this is a coordinated board, so there are many turn cards that could kill our action (any diamond, Q, J, T, or 8 will likely cause our opponent to slow down or even fold overpairs).

In addition, stacks are relatively deep in this hand, which means that calling standard sized bets on every street does not result in being all-in on the river. In order to stack our opponent, we must raise at some point in this hand.

Many people slowplay too many of their big hands because they aren’t taking into account board texture and stack size. When the flop is coordinated and when stacks are deep, you should be more inclined to play your big hands aggressively.

Raising on this flop is the best play.