This week we’re focused on a tournament scenario where you are out of position against a tough player in early position who opens to 2.5BBs, you raise to 10BBs from the Big Blind and they call.
This is an interesting situation due to the larger sizing of 4x the UTG+1 player’s raise since you’re out of position. In addition, remaining stacks in relation to the pot size going to the flop are relatively shallow with an approximate Stack to Pot Ratio of 2. These factors coupled with your opponent being in position postflop, leads to a higher calling frequency of your raise even with some of their biggest hands. The early position player will be utilizing a strategy that mixes calling and 4-betting and flat calling our 4x raise with the majority of their range that includes pocket aces, pocket kings, suited broadway hands, plus a handful of suited connectors and Ax combos.
So unlike many other situations with a reraise and call, the preflop caller in this instance doesn’t have a capped range. Your range as the Big Blind is also uncapped but is quite polarized with all of the strongest hands still possible as well as a mix of bluffing hands that includes suited combos such as Q5, 75, and 54.
With the shallow stacks, positional disadvantage, and polarized preflop range you should focus on continuation betting strategy balanced between some betting and some checking. You will notice that many that do c-bet in this spot do so at less than a 70% frequency. The best hands to c-bet will have significant hard equity and the ability to fire multiple barrels on certain runouts. For example, hands with reasonable showdown value such as top pair with good kicker and strong back door draws would be good candidates to bet.
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Use this series of articles to practice the strategies you learn on LearnWPT (or at the table) and test your progress by playing a five-hand sample each week