Top Pair facing a Turn All-in, what do you do here?
DECISION POINT: In a Tournament where blinds are 1,200/2,400 it folds around to you and you raise from the Button with K♦J♦. Both the Small Blind and Big Blind call. On the J♠6♥3♣ flop, SB checks, BB bets out, you call, and SB folds. Heads-up on the 7♦ turn, Villain goes all-in and action is on you. What do you do here?
PRO ANSWER: We raise preflop on the Button with KJs and are called by both Blinds. On a very dry flop (J-6-3 rainbow) the Big Blind donk leads into us (a donk bet is a term used for when a preflop caller leads into the preflop raiser) and we decide to call.
On the turn our opponent moves all-in. When you are first starting out in No-Limit Hold’em, calling an all-in with just one pair can sometimes feel like a daunting task.
However, in this spot, once we take into consideration the fact that we are representing a very wide range of hands after raising preflop on the Button AND the fact that the initial pot on the flop was 18,300 when the Big Blind has just 32,500 in their stack, this becomes a much easier call.
Continued below…
As a general rule, against 1-2 opponents getting all of our chips in postflop with a good top pair hand when the SPR (stack to pot ratio) is under 3 is a profitable play. In this case the SPR is actually < 2 and the flop is quite dry in a situation where our opponent perceives us to have a very wide hand range.
All of these factors combined lead to a very clear call of our opponent’s all-in.
Calling is the best play.
How would you play it?
Share your answer in the comments below!
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