DECISION POINT: You are playing an online series tournament and are the chip leader on the direct bubble with 53BBs. Blinds are 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big blind ante and two players at your table have less than 10BBs. Action folds to the MP2 player with 33BBs who opens to 2,000, it folds around to you in the Big Blind with K♣Q♣ and you call. You check the T♣2♦2♥ flop and your opponent c-bets 1,500 (1.5BBs).

Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are the chip leader on the exact bubble of an online series tournament. This tournament runs satellites, so there are potentially quite a few players left who stand to earn a significant return on investment to cash in this tournament. The blinds are 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big blind ante.

We are dealt K♣Q♣ in the Big Blind. Action folds to MP2 who opens to 2,000 and everyone else folds to us. Raising with KQ suited is an option and a +EV play in a vacuum, however we will be in an awkward spot if our opponent 4-bets all-in. Our specific hand also realizes its equity postflop out of position very well, favoring a more passive approach.

We call and the flop is T♣2♦2♥. When defending the Big Blind we will check 100% of our range to the preflop raiser in this spot. We do elect to check on the flop and MP2 bets 1,500. In this spot we have two overcards, a backdoor straight draw, and a backdoor flush draw. We also have a tremendous nut advantage on this board given our opponent’s range does not have many 2x combinations on this flop. While A2s and 22 are still potentially part of their first-in range from MP2, both of those hands are very marginal preflop opens given the ICM pressure and stacks.

As the only caller in the Big Blind and given the min-raise sizing, our range includes all the 2x suited hands, as well as some of the bigger 2x offsuit combinations such as A2o. The king queen combination also can have significant blockers here against KK/QQ as well, although we don’t specifically block KTs/QTs since the Tc is on the board.

This is a great spot to make a small check-raise and put our opponent in a really tough spot with most of their range. Looking at the specific table layout we see that UTG is severely shortstacked and will have to commit half of their stack for the big blind the next hand. Even a small raise size here threatens MP2’s stack and will force their range to constrict drastically given how close we are to the money bubble bursting.

Bet sizing of around 6,000-6,500 here will generate a lot of fold equity and gives us the option to easily fold vs a 4-bet, while still retaining some equity in the situations where MP2 decides to continue in the hand by flat calling.

Raising is the best play.