DECISION POINT: In a Tournament where blinds are 1500/3000 you raise 2.5BB from Middle Position with K♦K♣ and the Big Blind completes. On the 2♠5♠6♥ flop Villain check-raises your continuation bet and action is on you. What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: Preflop we raise to 8,000 and are called by just the Big Blind. Given our preflop raise sizing with an ante in play, our opponent can (and should) be calling us with a very wide range of hands preflop.

The flop is 2s-5s-6h and our opponent checks. This is actually a very interesting spot for us. This board is actually quite dynamic in most situations as it contains mostly low, connected cards and contains a flush draw. Typically our continuation bet on dynamic boards is going to want to be on the bigger side(around 70% of pot).

However, if we run this through a solver, because our range advantage in this spot is so overwhelming and because of that we want to be frequently betting with almost our entire range, a much smaller bet of around 30-40% of the pot is strongly preferred.

If we had bet smaller, continuing in this situation becomes easier since Villain’s potential range is much wider and their check-raise would likely be much smaller. As played we are now in a position where calling puts over 100k in the pot with just over 70k effective stacks remaining, which likely pot commits us to any future action.

By default, our opponent’s range given the preflop and flop action should be wide enough here to justify calling and getting the rest of the chips in on any non-spade turn. If we had any specific information that our opponent is incapable of raising this spot without having two pair or better we could make an exploitative fold. Without that player specific information calling and getting the rest of the chips in on a non-spade turn is the best play.

Calling is the best play.

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