I’m sure if you’ve read enough poker forums, or merely just spent a little time at the tables, you’ve heard the word “3-bet” tossed around a decent amount. To clarify to those who don’t know already, a 3-bet generally refers to a pre-flop re-raise. Though more specifically it can refer to a re-raise post flop, this is often more something that is referred to in an online context. For example, if I were to bet a flop of A 3 8, and get check-raised, then it would be a 3-bet for me to then come back over the top. In the earlier days of poker, 3-betting was used in order to increase the size of the pot when you held a “premium hand.” Often this re-raise signaled that you held a big pair, and as such, your opponents would give you respect, or you would be able to create and win a bigger pot with your superior holding.

A situational hand, AQ offsuit can often be a viable 3-bet for value.

Since Chris Moneymaker’s legacy however, and the infamous poker boom that followed shortly after, things have changed dramatically. Mostly through online poker, good players shortly found out that such 3-bets could garner them respect when they did not have a hand, and so began 3-betting “light.” Light refers to 3-betting with holdings of little significance, or in a lot of cases, the weakest holdings available. While 3-betting certainly doesn’t always occur under these circumstances, it is fair to say that we can now divide 3-betting into two different categories: 3-bet bluffing, and 3-betting for value. To keep things a little more compact, the focus here will be on 3-betting for value, and 3-betting light in the next article.

So, let’s take a look at a relatively common place spot you’ll encounter in a MTT. You’re on the button with AKo, and your opponent, an active, aggressive regular from Germany — opens from the cutoff position (one to the right of the dealer button) to 2,200 at 500/1000. He sits with around 60,000 himself, and you on the button, have around 45,000. You’ve been relatively tight, shown down some good hands, and gotten away with a few bluffs. You know your opponent loves to call re-raises — either through your online HUD (heads-up display), or, if we’re talking a live situation, you just know he loves to be in every pot. He has to defend his post as table captain.

In this spot, in position with a top tier holding — it would certainly be a good idea to re-raise. Aside from the fact that you can often flop a hand which will accumulate a lot of value; perhaps even double you up — if you don’t flop anything you’re frequently in a position to continue to represent strength, utilizing ‘standard’ continuation bets on flops that often don’t hit your opponents range. Moreover, should you win a large pot, you will garner respect or potentially impact on your opponents emotions so that they may be caused to tilt. Tilt makes you money, and allows you to extract value in spots which seem illogical, allowing you to get your money in ahead or crushing. Respect affords you manipulation, which plays a key role in your ability to run over the table and constantly put pressure on your opponents.

So now you've 3-bet, what are you going to do when Phil Ivey 4-bets you?

With this in mind, you must define different standards of holdings and whether or not you can 3-bet for value, or if the better course of action would be to just flat call. Let’s move on to a more situational example. Against a tight (or “nitty”) opponent, if they should open with a raise from early position on the table after showing an extended period of folding, it’s probably a good idea to flat call with AQo. You may even prefer a straight fold.  When the action folds to our notoriously aggressive friends on the button however, suddenly we’re holding the virtual nuts vs such a loose maniac. A lot of skilled players will 3-bet AQo from here, as the button may be raising it up with close to any two.

Gauging situations where 3-betting for value is appropriate is an experience game, and depends on a wealth of factors. Stack size, position, history, opponent type, tournament stage and effective prize equity involved, just to name a few. While these factors ultimately take time and practice to master, probably the most crucial piece of advice would be simply to approach a hand where you 3-bet with a plan. So often less experienced players simply consider a few factors, such as relative hand strength, then get right on to 3-betting. You need to ask yourself how you intend to play the hand out. What kind of boards are you looking for, and what situations can you justifiably stack off, whether it be pre-flop or post-flop. You also need to be ready for the inevitable possibility of the 4-bet, especially if you have used a number of 3-bets in recent history. While some players will not 4-bet — or raise your re-raise — without the goods, many of the best players around will use the 4-bet  to really put you to the test, and see if you are willing to play for everything, even if they aren’t.

Think of it this way: if your opponents understand that you 3-bet a specific range of holdings against their initial raise, let’s say 99+, AQo+ — and there is a portion of these hands that you would fold to a 4-bet, then it puts them in a position to really exploit you unless you have something ridiculously strong. In the above example, our friend who opens the button may be holding A4s, and when we decide to 3-bet him with AQo, he can then 4-bet, forcing a player who does not have a plan to fold all but AKo+ and QQ+.

Since it’s generally unlikely that we will have a top 1-2% hand, he can make this raise a lot of the time, and we generally won’t be able to defend unless we anticipate it with a plan before the action goes down.  If instead we plan to 5-bet all-in with AQo or 99 when he makes the additional re-raise, then we are always making use of our premium hand. Of course, this does pose a problem in that it allows our opponent to really induce value out of us when he has a holding which is even stronger.

3-betting all-in with a short-stack is a great way to overcome loose raisers.

The situation simply becomes a question of how often you think your opponent is capable of playing back at you pre-flop as a bluff. If he’s shown himself to be aggressive before, often risking a lot to win a succession of pots — it may be fair to assume that it is profitable for you to put all your money in with AQo. If however you feel as though he is only occasionally doing this as a bluff, and most of the time just calling with an even stronger holding, then it’s probably a better idea to just call pre-flop. Remember that whatever he is doing, if you choose to just call, you often have the ability to realise value anyway. Also, when you 3-bet but fold to his 4-bet, you have essentially turned your hand into 72o.  In the end, it’s up to you to make that judgement, and math is something that will assist you in doing that. While I won’t go into it here, I am happy to do so if requested, and would say that these decisions are often a combination of math and instinct — “instinct” being the other pieces of incomplete information that you might have to go on.

Outside of the pre-flop meta game, which will often determine appropriate hand ranges for you to make these decisions, there is also the consideration of 3-betting all in. 3-betting all in is often the most profitable way to play a stack which sits between 8 and 25 big blinds, where you are able to come over the top of your opponents initial raise with a valuable holding, inducing a call when you are often ahead, or causing them to fold a hand that they do not consider worthy of calling. For example, if you think that your opponent is raising with a wide range of hands from the button, let’s say something like A5o+, 22+, 109o+ or K4s+, this accounts for roughly 30% of all hands available. So, when you 3-bet all in with JJ over the top of this raise, your opponent may be inclined only to call with something more like ATo+, A9s+, 77+ KQo+. He would therefore be forced to fold around 66% of the time, and call with about 40% equity when he has a hand that is sufficient. Since you make money out of both outcomes, this play is going to make you a lot of chips in the long run.

Overall, the benefits of 3-betting for value are numerous. That being said, many of the thoughts expressed in this article are of my own making, or sit in line with other professionals and how they see the basics of 3-betting in MTTs. While many of those players come highly recommended, there is certainly a wealth of players who see things differently, and are a great deal better than myself. I, personally, see 3-betting value holdings and folding to a 4-bet as poor planning, however others use this technique for information — something seen more often in live — or for the “blocker value” of the cards they 3-bet/fold with. Blocker value refers to the lesser chance that your opponent is dealt an Ace or other card because you hold one yourself (15% less I believe).  For these reasons, I encourage criticism and discussion regarding this topic, which will then allow us to go on and look at 3-betting light in MTTs. Moreover, what’s discussed here is really the tip of the iceberg in terms of how deep this subject is. We’re looking to move on to more advanced content further down the road potentially.

Please post in the comment section below! Thanks for reading.

Playing cards
Early on in people’s poker careers there’s a common misconception that every hand has an equal chance of winning. After all the board hasn’t bean dealt yet. What if I fold my lucky 72o and the board comes 7,7,2. Well, let’s just say it wont, and if it does write me an angry email. There are basically 72 starting hands in poker (forgetting suits) AA is ranked first and will win over 75% of the time, 72o is ranked worst and on average will win less than 15% of the time. Sure it CAN win, but poker is a game of big numbers. If you’re playing live you should be playing around 25-30 hands and hour. A good tournament will last 6 hours or more so it goes without saying if you’re winning less than 15% of the hands you’re in you’ll be out in no time. So what are the cards you should be playing? Well for an absolute beginner I would suggest just playing premium cards AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, AK, and may be AQ. Until you get the hang of position and power (our next two points) you’ll need your hand to do almost all of the work. Smaller pairs 77, 88, and 99 may get some newbies into trouble post flop when their hand becomes second or third pair.

Position
Many pros will tell you position is everything. And if this was a tip for advanced players maybe position would be at the top of the Ps. It’s still very very important for beginners so here goes. The button (dealer) determines position in a hand of poker. The player sitting to the left of the button is the small blind, to their left is the big blind. Although these two players act last pre flop, after the flop the will have to act first on every street. This is a serious disadvantage for a beginner. Not only do you not know how strong or weak your opponent is, but they will see you act before they make their decision. Because of this you have to be very careful of what cards you play from early position (the first 4 seats to the left of the dealer in a 10 handed game) Conversely if you are the dealer you will get to act last on every street after the flop so you can relax a little with your cards. If every one shows weakness, pounce!

Power
Raise, Raise, Raise! Of all the mistakes beginners make this may be the hardest to correct. Poker is all about making a worse hand call or a better hand fold. Often this will come down to one thing. Power. Almost all beginners prefer to call than to fold or raise but let me burn this into your brain – NEVER CALL – I mean that. If you never called I’d be happy. Sure there are moments where you should just be calling but they are few and far between and far to complicated to explain. For now fold bet or raise! Many newbies will bet out random amounts, 100, 200, 500 without thinking about it. Weather you have the worst hand, or the nuts this is never good. If you have the best hand you’ll price your opponents into a call and they’ll catch up with you. If you’re bluffing the bet won’t scare them off and it’ll make for an embarrassing showdown. Either way a strong bet will scare them. Usually this will be 3 times the big blind pre flop, and around 75% of the total pot post flop, turn and river. Now granted, this will be scary for you, but if you’re afraid and you know what cards you’re carrying, imagine how terrified your opponent is! And scared opponents make bad decisions.

BHS

You absolutely must know when the best time to quit a session and move up a limit is if you ever want to be a highly successful player. With that in mind, let’s look at some poker time management concepts. How long should your sessions be? One mistake that a lot of poker players make is playing too long of sessions. For instance, if you can only concentrate for 4 hours, then you have no business playing an 8 hour session. Likewise, if you can concentrate for 4 hours, then you’re losing money by only playing for two or three hours. So you should definitely keep track of how long you’re able to focus while playing poker. Keep tabs on this number over the course of a few weeks and see where your prime performance comes.

Dealing with a squeeze bet when you’re the initial caller is tough, but a balance approach can turn the raisers aggression into an advantage for you…

Three-bet Squeezes are a run of the mill move in any reasonable level tournament now and so not learning how to deal with them will only get you in trouble.

Many blame Dan Harrington for this often over used play as his  Harrington on Hold’em books introduced the masses to it. Since then poker tables around the world have been riddled with Squeezes, re-squeezes and squozzes. (I made that last one up). It’s a move that many players know is a move, but few have the amunition to counter. In fact the move is often so obvious that it becomes open conversation. “ Nice Squeeze, I fold” I even had one particularly passionate poker dealer at SKYCITY cough “squeeze” as a player made the move! For those unfamiliar with the squeeze play, it becomes possible when there has been an initial preflop raise and a call of that raise by a player in position. The last piece of the puzzle is when another player puts in an additional raise, either from late position or the blinds, and thus ‘squeezes’ the  raiser and the caller.

The move works for 2 key reasons. 1) The initial raiser can only continue if they have a premium hand, because they not only have to worry about the player squeezing, but also the player that’s called behind them. On top of this they will often be playing the rest of the hand out of position to one or both players. 2) The initial caller will generally not have a hand strong enough to continue, if they had a premium hand they most likely would have 3 bet in the first place.

Because it’s such a strong play the squeeze is often made with sub-par hands. Of course pulling the trigger is easier said than done so in this piece I’m going to examine some key factors and try to come up with a way to deal with a situation where you or I are the meat in the squeeze sandwich and are now heads up with the squeezer.

Who is the squeezer?

As with most hand analysis the most important question when dealing with a squeezer is “who is this punk that’s putting on a move”? Is it a loose aggressive player who’s been pulling sports car maneuvers since he sat down? Is the player a rock who hasn’t played a hand in an hour? Just because a player has a table image it doesn’t necessarily mean they bluffing or have a premium hand. In fact a tight player will often USE their rockish image to pick up some chips by squeezing. Especially if (the MOST MOST important concept in poker) THEY THINK THE INITIAL RAISER IS LIGHT AND YOU, AS A CALLER ARE LIGHT. They may believe that their medium strength hand may be good! To a lot of rocks we all look like Gus Hansen. Anyway I digress.  A loose player will also often use their image to their advantage by squeezing with a very strong hand. It is important, therefore, to not only know the playing style of your opponent but their tendencies and betting patterns. If a loose, aggressive player has never squeezed before, chances are they aren’t bluffing. If a rock has only played three hands in the last two hours but all three times have been a squeeze play, chances are they might be raising light. Know who is doing the squeezing and you’ll have a far easier time deciding what to do.

Key factors when responding to a squeeze play:

Responding to a squeeze play is a costly proposition. Because there has been a three-bet already, you will usually be looking at making a decision that is for a large percentage of your stack. In addition to knowing who is squeezing there are three other primary factors that will come into play when you are deciding whether or not to continue.

Factor 1: Stack size.

If you are going to reraise all-in against the squeezer, you need to be careful to make sure they have not committed themselves to playing the hand (unless you want the action). For example, the blinds are 100/200, ante 25 at a ten-handed table and the initial raise was to 600. The squeezer has reraised to 2,000, leaving themselves 2,500 behind. You have them covered. If you move all-in, the squeezer will have to call 2,500 to win 7,650, or over 3-to-1 on their money. There aren’t many hands the squeezer is going to fold in this situation, so unless you want a call, folding here would be a better option.

Factor 2: Stage of the tournament.

Early in a tournament when the money is deep, it’s often better to err on the side of caution and fold if you are facing a squeeze. However, if the stacks are very deep then you can possibly test the squeezer with a four-bet to see if they were making a move without having to risk your tournament life. Let’s say you are playing in the WSOP Main Event where you start with 30,000 in chips and the blinds start at 50/100. An initial raiser makes it 350 and you call before the squeezer reraises to 1,000. You can put in another raise to 2,500 without risking a large percentage of your stack. If your opponent reraises, you can release your hand or if given the right price try to outflop them.

Factor 3: Strength of hand.

This factor is self-explanatory. If you called a raise with a hand like 7-6 suited, your decision is an easy one. The tougher calls come with hands like medium pairs and big cards. This is where the first two factors, as well as your read on your opponent, will come more into play. If you were being tricky with a big pair like Queens, Kings or Aces or even A-K hoping for someone to squeeze, you got your wish and should go with it.

The purpose of the game is to make the best possible hand of five cards from the two cards dealt to you at the beginning of the game (hole cards) and the five community cards on the table, which are dealt as the game progresses.

Not all games will go the distance – if at any point all players fold and there is only one player left in the game, he will win the pot.

Posting Blinds

Before the hole cards are dealt, the player to the left and next-left of the dealer button are required to post the blind and big blind respectively, this only happens at the beginning of each new hand.

The deal

Once the blinds are posted each player is dealt two hole cards face down on the table. From the immediate left of the big blind and continuing in a clockwise manner, each player must act on the cards they have been dealt. They can choose to do any of the following…

Fold – throw the cards away.

Call – match the amount of the big blind.

Raise – increase the bet amount.

If there is no raise, betting will finish with the big blind, however if there are raises the betting continues until all players on the table have matched the last raise made or have folded.

In limit games betting is limited to three raises.

The flop

OK, now that the first round of betting is out of the way, it’s time to see the flop.

The flop is made up of three cards, dealt face-up in the middle of the table (on the board). Each player can use these community cards to build their strongest hand.

The person who starts the betting at the flop and in the next subsequent rounds is the player to the immediate left of the dealer button.

The turn card

A single card is now dealt into the middle to add to the three from the flop. Players still in the game build their strongest hand with their two hole cards and the four community cards.

The river

Now it’s time for the fifth and final community card to be dealt – the river. Now that all the cards have been dealt, each player remaining in the hand can see what their best five-card hand is.

This is also the final round of betting.

The showdown

Here comes the crunch, time to see who takes the pot. Each player who has remained in the hand can now show their cards, starting with the last person to bet, and then moving round the table clockwise. Players who know they’re beaten have the option of mucking (throwing their cards away without showing). But the last player to bet (and first to show) always has to show their cards.

Keep focused

Seeing what cards other players have, even if they lose, is critical in developing a good strategy so it’s always a good idea to take note when you have the chance.

Listening to the beard

In poker theorist David Sklansky’s hand ranking chart he includes A-J suited in the second-best group of hands alongside T-T, A-Qs, K-Qs and A-Ko. Meanwhile, A-Jo is in the fourth group of hands along with T-9s, K-Qo, 8-8, Q-Ts, 9-8s, J-9s and K-Ts. Whether suited or unsuited, however, the hand has rightly received the reputation of being more than a little troublesome. Why? Simply because you can never be that comfortable playing a big pot with A-J. If you flop an Ace and face heavy action you’re more likely to be dominated than ahead, but it’s quite possible that by the time you realise this there will be too much in the pot to fold.

Below are a few PokerStove calculations to help you understand some common situations with A-J. If you don’t have PokerStove it’s a great free piece of software that allows you to calculate your equity against different ranges.

Holding Ac-Jc on a dry As-6d-2c board

Against a reasonable calling range of A-A, 6-6, 2-2, A-Ts+ and A-To+ you have 35% equity in this spot (32.25% with A-Jo). Although you only have a third of the equity in the pot against that tight range, this is better than you may initially think.

Holding Ac-Jc on a wet board of As-Ks-9c

Against a reasonable calling range of: K-K+, 9-9, A-Ts+, K-Qs, Qs-Js, Qs-Ts, Js-Ts, Ts-9s and A-Jo+ you have 33% equity (30.9% with A-Jo).

Another reason A-J rates worse than A-Q or A-K is that when you flop top pair with your Jack there are obviously more overpairs to the board that have you crushed. As such, what appears to be a strong hand – top-top, as Jamie Gold would say – is in fact a lot weaker.

Pot control with A-J

Often then, when you do flop top pair while relatively deep-stacked in the early stages of a tournament (or Sit & Go), A-J and A-Jo are hands that should be played passively. You should control the pot when in position and mostly check-call when out of position (A-J should almost always be folded out of position to three-bets when deep).

However there are some times when it can be profitable to go to war with A-J, even if it’s rare that you’ll be a big favourite. The most common time when you’re just going to have to call off with A-J is when effective stacks are between 12 and 20 big blinds and you open for a raise in late position and a player three bets all-in. Against most conceivable ranges you’re going to have enough equity to make a call possible.

For example, say you’re at a ten-handed table with blinds at 500/1,000/a100 and a 20,000 stack. You open to 2,600 from the cutoff with As-Js, the small blind moves in for 14,000 total, the big blind folds and the decision is back on you. There is now 18,600 in the pot and it is 11,400 for you to call, giving you odds of 1.63-to-1. How much equity do you need to break even here? The simple way to work this out is by adding both parts of your pot odds together (1.63+1) and dividing 100 by that number: 100/2.63 = 38.02%. Let’s see how A-J (both suited and offsuit) plays against shoving ranges for Mr Nit (that’s online speak for ‘tight’), Mr Average and Mr Loose.

Mr Nit: 6-6+, A-Ts+, K-Qs, A-Jo+
Here A-Js has 40.65% equity and A-Jo has 37.39% equity.

Mr Average: 5-5+, A-Ts+, K-Js+, Q-Js, A-To+, K-Qo
Here A-Js has 47.1% equity, while A-Jo has 44.27% equity.

Mr Loose: 2-2+, A-8s+, K-Ts+, Q-Ts+, J-Ts, A-To+, K-To+, Q-To+, J-To
Against this range A-Js has 53.5% equity and A-Jo has 51.06% equity.

As you can see, only against a tight range with A-Jo do you fail to have the equity you need in the above scenario, and despite being an underdog to the perceived ranges in four of the six scenarios, and only a marginal favourite in the two others, the chips in the pot mean you should be calling. Even against a player who you perceive to be so tight that they are only shoving 8-8+, A-Qs+ and A-Qo+ in this spot, you still have 34.8% equity. If you pick a hand that is in the same Sklansky grouping as A-Jo and that looks ‘better’, such as T-9s, does it really play any better? Using the same ranges as above, T-9s has the following equity:

Against Mr Nit: 35.9%
Against Mr Average: 36.69%
Against Mr Loose: 37.73%

So in this spot, even though we might be quicker to call with T-9s than A-Jo because it’s more likely that we have two live cards, this hand actually plays worse against the given ranges.

Bear in mind that I’ve not touched on weighting someone’s range. Even Mr Loose’s range is likely to be weighted towards the upper end as he knows, given the price we’ll be getting, that we are likely to call, and this may alter the equity situation somewhat. Also, remember that in the late stages of MTTs and in Sit & Gos you should take ICM into account as well. Still, next time you get Ace-Jack in a tournament don’t, whatever you do, open-fold it on the button heads-up!

Opening the pot

Let’s say you’ve started with 1,500 and it’s the first blind level at 10/20 and you’re in early position with Big Slick. You raise to 60 and are called in two spots. Even against two callers and out of position you’re still in a great situation here with a huge hand going to the flop.

Hitting the flop

You’ve hit the flop on a King or Ace-high board. Great. What now? Well, first of all do you bet or check intending to raise? Generally speaking a check-raise is a bad idea here, as it pushes out hands that would otherwise give you action because you are telegraphing massive strength. Check-calling is also going to slow down your opponents and may stop you from extracting a lot of value. So your final option is to make a continuation bet, and this is generally a far better line to take against standard opponents because, well, you’re expected to make one whether you’ve hit or not. In most cases you’ve got the best hand, so you should build up the pot, plus you prevent opponents from taking a free card that could put you in hot water.

If you get called, checking behind on the turn is often the best line to take, both for the sake of pot control and because you’ll often induce opponents with a worse hand to bet or turn their hand into a bluff. Against more cautious opponents the check on the turn can also persuade them to call a good-sized value bet on the river with your top pair. If you get raised you have the option of reraising, and against opponents you think will donk off with a bad top pair or worse, getting it in there and then isn’t the worst option. Against most players though you’re only going to get called by a hand that crushes you.

Playing the turn (when you were called on the flop)

Okay, you’ve bet the flop and been called. So now you’re going to take a line that involves checking to your opponents. As mentioned this is both for pot control and so as not to scare away hands that you’re crushing, i.e. worse top pair or second pair. A check here can induce opponents who were floating to pull the trigger or allow players calling with a draw or weak pocket pair to bluff. Also, as mentioned, a check sets your opponents up to call a good-sized value bet on the river. Think of it from their point of view. Someone raises from early position, fires the flop then checks the turn when they meet some resistance? Often they’ll try to steal the pot on the river, and if a blank card peels off you’ll often think your pair is good and make the call.

Playing the turn (when you were raised on the flop and called)

Checking in this spot is also a good approach, and if your opponent checks behind you can usually feel safe to value-bet the river looking to get called by a weaker top pair. If your opponent follows up his flop raise by dropping the hammer with another bet on the turn then you’re in a tough spot with just top pair. If it’s a small bet relative to your stacks then feel free to call and reassess on the river. If the bet is for a large chunk of change and effectively commits to you to calling on the river it’s often best just to muck the hand and move on. Does it feel horrible? Yes. Does it mean you’re sometimes going to get bluffed off the best hand? Also yes, but this is poker and it’s about making the correct decisions over a wide spread of hands. More often than not you’ll be saving yourself chips, not losing them.

Should you always take this bet-check line on relatively dry boards? No, because in poker there are very few universal rules. But as a standard approach this should serve you well in most situations when you’re out of position with Big Slick.

Consider these two situations. First the worst case scenario you’re in the big blind, Blinds are 50, 100, everyone has around 50 BBs, you pick up Jacks. There’s a mid position limper, then another limp from the cut off, and another from the button. The Small blind folds. You raise to 550, the mid position limper calls, the late position muppets get out of the way. The flop comes Kh, Tc, 3h. Now out of position you may think you’re in bad shape here. The limper has a range that could include many hands that have connected with this flop. Quite a few of them have you crushed and so many peoples first instinct here is to check. Although this is a line you could take consider this. The board is very draw heavy and he may be holding hands like QJ, AXh… Releasing control of the hand may not be the best idea here. Yes he may also have KJ, KQ or KT but these only make up a small percentage of his range. In reality it is likely to include AT, QT, JT, 9T and any pair up to 9s. I like a bet here and I like the idea of making it small to induce one of these weaker hands (or air) to bluff.

When in position it’s even less scary. Say you raise QQ from the cutoff with effective stacks of 20 big blinds and the big blind flat-calls. The flop is A,8,3 rainbow – a very dry board. Here the Ace is far more likely to have connected with your hand than your opponent’s, as it’s almost certain that he’d have reraised out of position preflop with a big Ace like AK and AQ and probably with A-J and A-T too. There is a chance your opponent decided to flat-call with a hand such as A9 or A8 suited, but that makes up a far smaller part of his range than Broadway hands such as KJ or KQ (remembering that you’re holding two Queens) and pocket pairs and suited connectors. So here your Queens are likely the best hand. If you believe the player is someone who will consider a check a sign of weakness, you could exploit his tendencies by giving him a free card. The only card you really don’t want to see on the turn is a King and that’s a fairly slim possibility.

I guess this whole piece is simply about adjusting your attitude. If like me you used to be one of those “Find a dark cloud in every silver flop” kind of guys then the lesson here is often a less than ideal board can work out just fine.