Responding to an Opponent's Small Postflop Bets After Making a Strong Hand
Here's an interesting tournament hand in which I start out flopping a set, yet thanks to a monotone board I am not too excited initially about building a big pot. Then on the turn I improve to a full house, at which point I want to try to get more chips in the middle.
Interestingly, though, my opponent kept leading with small bets on every postflop street, which made my decisions a little less straightforward than they might have been otherwise.
It was a $10,000 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament. The blinds were 200/400 with a 50 ante, and after a player with about 70,000 to start raised to 1,200 from the hijack seat, I looked down at 3?3? on the button and with about 95,000 in my stack I elected to call. As I talk about in the video below, either calling or reraising is fine here, with my decision usually affected by the playing styles of those in the blinds.
The flop came 9?4?3?, meaning I had made bottom set although I wasn't crazy about all of those spades, and with almost 3,500 in the middle my opponent led for 1,000. This is actually a tough spot, since just calling here gives my opponent great odds to see the turn with a potential spade draw, but raising opens me up to being reraised, thus making things even more uncomfortable for me.
I just called, then the turn happily brought the 4? to give me a full house. Again my opponent led with a small bet, betting 1,500 into almost 5,500. Now I had to decide whether just to call or to raise, knowing if I raised I might lose some river value.
I'll stop there and let you see what I decided to do both on the turn and the river, and listen to my thought process as I worked out what to do.
On the river, we have the effective nuts. How much would you have raised on the river?
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $6,800,000 in live tournament earnings. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts a podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.
