A Postflop Challenge: Trying to Get Value After Turning the Nuts
This week's hand comes from a $3,500 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament and features one of those "good news, bad news" situations that often come up in poker. The good news is I turn a very strong hand, but the bad news is I find myself in a challenging position to get much value out of it.
With a stack of 30,000, the blinds 50/100, and the table playing six-handed, I was dealt K?9? under the gun and chose to raise to 300. Only the button called, and the flop came 7?5?4?.
In the video below I discuss how I compared my likely range to my opponent's likely range, then how I decided to bet 700 with my flush draw (about two-thirds pot). My opponent called.
The turn then brought the A?, giving me the nut flush and also that challenge I mentioned before to try to figure out how to get paid.
How would you approach this situation? Would you slow play, bet small, or bet large? See what I chose to do and how things played out:
Looking back, my decision to bet just over half-pot on the turn was probably a mistake. I could see either betting much smaller or (even better) betting bigger here as a better way to target my opponent's likely range. What do you think?
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $6,700,000 in live tournament earnings. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts a podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.
