PokerCoaching.com Quiz: Turning Middle Pair

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You are playing four-handed in a four-max online tournament. The blinds are 800-1,600 with an 800 ante. The cutoff folds to the button with 92,391 in chips, who raises to 6,400, and the small blind folds. You are in the big blind and have A 9 with 71,921 chips.

Question 1: Should you fold, call, or reraise to 18,000?

Answer: This is a dicey situation because you are facing a large four big blind raise from out of position. If you three-bet and face a four-bet you have to fold, which would be unfortunate. If you call, you will often miss the flop and have to either fold or stick around with a weak ace high. Either way, this is a rough one.

If you think you may face a four-bet, the ideal strategy is to call and see the flop. Folding would be far too weak. 

You call and see a flop of J 7 6. Both of you check, and the turn is the 9. The pot size is 14,400.

Question 2: Should you check, bet 5,000, or bet 10,000?

Answer: While middle pair is normally not too strong, when the flop checks through, it goes up in value a lot. Betting large has some merit, but your opponent may have checked behind on the flop with some of their top pairs.

Betting small has the benefit of possibly setting the price to see the river plus extracting value from numerous worse marginal made hands like 8-8 and A-K.

That said, checking is probably ideal to protect the rest of your checking range that does not especially want to face a bet.

You check and your opponent bets 4,800. The pot size is now 19,200.

Question 3: Should you fold, call, or raise to 15,000?

Answer: Your opponent bet one-third of the pot. Folding is out of the question, and so is raising. While you often have the best hand, if your opponent calls your raise, you are probably in bad shape. So, call and see the river.

You call and the river is the 3. You check and your opponent bets 16,000.

Question 4: Should you fold, call, or go all-in?

Answer: While you certainly could be crushed, it is far more likely that your opponent thinks you have a weak made hand that will fold to a substantial amount of river aggression. Any time you take a somewhat passive line against someone who is capable of bluffing, you should be more than happy to check-call on the river when lots of draws miss. 

You call the bet from your opponent. He shows K 8 for a failed bluff, giving you a nice 56,000 chip pot. ♠

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