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.
