K♥K♠ on the Turn, what do you do here?

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Decision Point:
In a Cash Game it folds to you in Middle Position with K♥K♠ and you raise. The Hijack and the Big Blind call. The Flop comes 8♣7♣2♥. The Big Blind checks and you bet. The Hijack folds and the Big Blind calls. The Turn is the 3♥. The Big Blind moves All-In. Action is on you, what do you do here?

Pro Answer: Your opponent moves all-in for more than a pot-sized bet on the turn, what do you do with pocket Kings?

In this hand, we raise preflop with pocket kings and got two callers. The flop is highly coordinated, with both straight and flush draws present. This devalues our kings, however, with only two opponents we should still make a continuation bet.

After the player in the Big Blind calls our continuation bet, they move all-in on the turn for nearly twice the size of the pot. We are getting worse pot odds to continue when Players make overbets, therefore in order to call overbets like this one we need to believe our hand is best relatively often.

Continued below...

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One key factor in this hand is the stack size of the big blind. They started the hand with around 60 big blinds. The hand range that an average player will get all-in preflop with 60 big blinds is wider than if they had 100 or 150 big blinds.

We can expect that this player would take this action with several one pair hands that our worse than ours, such as TT, JJ, QQ and 8x hands. There are two flush draws present, so our opponent could play draws in this way as well.

Overall, we will win this hand often enough to justify calling, despite our opponent’s overbet.

Calling is the best play.

What would you do here?
Share your answer in the comments below!



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