Facing a Raise With a Straight Draw
Here's another hand from the same $2,000 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament I recently played, one involving an interesting decision on the flop where I had to figure out how to respond to an opponent raising me after I had bet with an open-ended straight draw.
Like last week's hand, this one finds me under the gun and once again I have a hand that if I'm going to play I like raising with it — 10♥9♥. I talk a little at the start of the video about the usefulness of raising with more than just your very best starting hands.
Here I made a 3x raise to 600, and two players called — a loose-aggressive player on the button and a tight-aggressive player in the small blind.
The flop came J♠8♥4♣, and when it checked to me I continued for 1,200 with my open-ended straight draw and backdoor flush draw. I'm generally going to be betting any good draw in this situation, but especially on an uncoordinated board like this one.
Somewhat surprisingly, the LAG player on the button raised to 3,100. The small blind folded, and I had to decide whether or not I wanted to continue battling for this pot from out of position.
This is a situation where you have to take a moment to assess your opponent's range and figure out how often he will call if you apply additional aggression. If you have a lot of fold equity, it is often wise to blast all your money in rather than just calling.
Take a look to hear how I assessed this particular situation and opponent, then see what I did and how things turned out:
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $6,700,000 in live tournament earnings. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts a podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.
