Q&A #21: Protecting Top Pair in a Big Pot

Don't miss one article! Subscribe to the Full Feed RSS or get NPA in your inbox.

setosevens asks,

Hi Ed.� What a great site.

I’ve got a hand here that a friend of mine played online the other night and we had a bit of a disagreement about it.� I was fairly confident about what the best play was, but it differed from how he played it, and Lord knows I’ve been wrong before.� Sometimes I tend to screw things up when it comes to big pots and hand protection, and situational things, etc..� I’d love to hear your input, so here goes:

The player in the cutoff seat is our main villain.� He’s tight by micro-limit standards and seems more aggressive than average after the flop, tending to bet/raise if he’s in there.� The limpers are typical, loose/poor players.

Online, microlimit, 8-handed.

Our hero is dealt A:spade:K:spade: in the the little blind.

Player 1 limps, Player 2 raises, fold, fold, Villian calls, fold, Hero 3-bets, BB folds, everyone calls.

4 players to the flop for 13 small bets.

Flop: K:heart: 7:diamond: 8:heart:

Hero bets out, Player 1 calls, Player 2 (the pre flop raiser) calls, Villian raises…

At this point there are 19 small bets in the pot.

How would you play the hand from this point forward?

I answered a similar question to this one last week. You might want to check out my answer to that one. The main question is, should you 3-bet immediately, or should you smooth call, looking to check-raise the turn?

 Print :: Trackback :: Respond ::