DECISION POINT: You are in a live tournament with blinds at 50/100 and the UTG player opens to 3BBs. It folds to you on the Button and you call with 9♣8♣. The Small Blind folds and the Big Blind calls. The flop is 4♣5♥7♣. The Big Blind checks, UTG c-bets 3.5BBs and you raise to 10BBs total. The Big Blind folds and UTG calls. The UTG checks the 6♥ turn and you bet 20BBs into a 30BB pot, UTG calls. The river is the 4♦, pairing the board and UTG leads for 30BBs into a 70BB pot.

Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: Our opponent raised first-in to the pot from UTG and c-bet the flop, then called our raise from out of position. They check-called a half pot sized bet on the flop, then led the river on a highly coordinated four card straight and paired board. Given the actions taken by the UTG player in this hand we can expect to see a full house in this scenario a reasonable portion of the time.

However, they might also take this overall betting line with other straight combinations, trips, or occasionally missed heart flush draws. Our opponent is giving pot odds of over 3-1 by betting slightly less than half pot. This means we need just under 25% equity to call this bet which we expect to have in this scenario. Given these factors we should at a minimum call this river lead. But what about raising with our straight here?

Raising for value is out of the question, since only hands that have us dominated will continue against further aggression. Raising as a bluff is also not preferred. There simply aren't any hands remaining in UTG’s range that are ahead of our straight and will also find a fold in this spot if we elect to raise this river lead.

This makes calling the best play.