DECISION POINT: In a live $1/$2 cash game the Early Position player limps, the MP1 player raises to $10, and the Hijack calls. You make it $40 from the Cutoff with A♣K♦ and MP1 and Hijack call. You make quads on the K♥K♣K♠ flop and both your opponents check. Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing at a full ring $1/$2 cash table. We’ve won a few early pots and are up to $350 while the rest of the table has mostly stacks around $200. We are dealt AcKd in the Cutoff. The Under the Gun player open limps, MP1 raises to $10, MP2 folds, the Hijack calls, and action is on us.

Our hand is certainly far enough ahead of our opponent’s ranges to 3-bet. A standard 3-bet would be 3x the initial raise plus any call amounts, or around $40. We do have some potential complications. If we raise to $40 and only get one caller there will be around $90 in the pot with potentially either $134 or $160 effective stacks, leaving the stack to pot ratio (SPR) of 1.5-2.

Given that we will miss the flop around 2/3rd of the time, raising to $40 will create a scenario that is very awkward for us to play postflop during the two thirds of the time we miss.

Sizing up could make our postflop play a bit easier, however then we potentially run into the issue of betting pattern tells if we’re not also raising this amount with some of our QQ/KK/AA combinations. In real-time we make it $40 and everyone folds except MP1 and the Hijack who both call.

The flop is KhKcKs and we flop quads. Both players check and we’re left with an interesting decision. With low SPR, position, and a huge hand where we have all of the board this is a perfect spot to slowplay.

However, in this situation it can be somewhat hard for our opponents to “catch up” to a second best hand depending on their preflop range. Tighter players have condensed ranges heavily weighted towards preflop pairs and hands like AQ/AJ that already think this flop is quite good for them. The pocket pairs also can’t really “catch up” as even if their card hits they do not improve to a better full house.

You should be much more likely to check back against wider range opponents who are likely to have a lot of JTs/QJs/87s type hands in their range that might fill up on the turn, but are unlikely to call anything on the flop.

If your opponents have narrower ranges, building the pot now and giving them a chance to make a mistake is a must. Since we have such a dominant range advantage in this spot and there is little reason to protect most of our made hands, giving our bluffs a super cheap price is the best approach.

Betting somewhere in the 25-33% of pot range gives our opponents room to make some big mistakes with pocket pairs and ace high hands while also giving our bluffs a great price.

If we know our opponents are very loose preflop you should check, otherwise betting small ($35-$40) is the best play.