DECISION POINT: You are at a live 6-max $5/$10 cash game table with players whom you’ve observed to be skilled. First-in from Early Position you raise to $60 (the table standard) with Q♥Q♠. The Hijack raises to $110 and the Button and Big Blind call.

Action is back on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing in a $5/$10 6-max cash game where the effective stack is just over $1,000. We have over $1,600 and we’ve won a few healthy pots but the table is still relatively new to us and all players seem to be of a reasonable skill level. We are dealt QhQs in MP2 first to act and make the standard raise for this game to $60. The Hijack directly to our left 3-bets the minimum to $110. The Cutoff folds, the Button and the Big Blind both cold call, and action is on us.

There are definitely players who have a betting pattern tell where a min-raise preflop here is extremely likely to be AA/KK and nothing else. Against those specific players we are getting more than correct odds to call speculatively preflop for the sole purpose of trying to flop a set, as our implied odds are massive.

It is important that when we decide to call with QQ as a speculative hand we don’t alter the plan and start treating our hand like a good top pair. Changing strategy midway through the hand in this way is one the bigger mistakes players make with medium pocket pairs and sometimes hands as strong as QQ like we have here.

Without the specific read that the Hijack’s min-raise indicates a super strong hand, we have to 4-bet in this spot as queens are the 3rd best hand in poker and we are too high up in our range.

Not only are pocket queens likely ahead of the Hijack’s opening range, the Button and Big Blind cap their ranges away from the strongest possible holdings by cold calling the min-raise. Hands including AJs/AQs/KQs are likely part of those cold calling ranges, potentially blocking Hijack from having AA/KK.

With a good sized pot already in play, this is also a classic “squeeze” spot so it is quite possible we get action from hands like TT/JJ/AQ here that might think we’re trying to take the pot away with a move.

With $395 in the pot this is a fairly straightforward all-in, versus all but the tightest of 3-bettors.

Moving all-in is the best play