DECISION POINT: In a live six-handed $2/$5 cash game with tough players, action folds to you in the Hijack and you raise the table standard $12 with J♦J♥. The Cutoff folds, the Button calls, and both Blinds fold. You bet $15 on the 8♥4♦5♠ flop and get called. The turn is 3♥ and action is on you. What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing a $2/$5 six-handed cash game and have managed to build our initial $500 stack to $869, however the table lineup appears to be quite tough. MP2 folds first to act and we are dealt JdJh in the Hijack. We make a standard raise for this game to $12 and only the Button calls. The flop is 8h4d5s and action is on us.

Given that we are out of position and deep stacked with likely wide ranges, this is not a spot where we are going to be automatically c-betting with our entire range. Pocket Jacks are high up in our range and benefit from protection, and we can expect our opponent to float here with a wide range of hands that will set up a lot of potential turn options. The only real question is bet sizing.

Typically the closer our overpair is in range to top pair on a given board, the more we want to bet big for protection. There is a 2 card gap between Jacks and eights and the stacks are very deep so we don’t really want to bloat the pot out of position. A smaller bet sizing in the neighborhood of $10-$12 would be ideal but in the moment we elect to bet closer to half pot, or $15, and the Button calls.

The turn is the 3h. This card does put a potential backdoor flush on the board but didn’t really improve any hand in our opponent’s range other than A2s. However, there are now a lot of Ax type hands and potential back door flushes that floated the flop that have 7+ outs.

The decision here is really between checking to try and get to a controlled showdown while keeping our opponent’s range wide and getting them to stab at the pot with a lot of weaker hands that floated the flop, or betting to get some value out of other medium strength made hands and to protect our hand. Against tougher players we also want to consider that we’re going to want to be betting a lot of the Ax and two heart hands in our range as well, and we need some value hands to balance out our bluffs.

Jacks are pretty high up in our range here and make sense to bet both as a part of our value range and for protection. We can easily continue with around a half pot bet here.

Betting is the best play.