DECISION POINT: You are in the early stages of a daily tournament and don’t have any reads on your opponents. Blinds are at 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big blind ante and the average stack is close to 50BBs. The UTG+1 player opens to 2,300 and it folds around to you on the Button with A♠3♠ and you call. The Blinds fold and the flop comes 9♦4♠2♦. Your opponent continuation bets for 3,900 and action is on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are in the early stages of a daily tournament. Around 75% of the field remains in the tournament and the average stack is close to 50 big blinds. The blinds are 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big blind ante. We are dealt A♠3♠ on the Button and UTG+1 opens to 2,300. The players in middle and late position fold and action is on us.

Defending our Button appropriately is a crucial tournament skill and it’s important to determine how to continue in the hand with specific parts of our range. When defending the Button we will have absolute position for the remainder of the hand which allows for realization of equity on many different board textures. Speculative hands including suited combos containing an Ace, suited connectors, plus some small and mid pairs make excellent defense candidates against our opponent’s early position opening range.

In this scenario we decide to continue by calling and see a flop of 9♦4♠2♦. Our opponent in the UTG+1 seat has a range advantage on this board as their range contains more overpairs than our range on the Button. While UTG+1’s range dominates pertaining to big pairs, our range actually has the nut advantage as we are likely to have 44/22 more often than our opponent does as the first-in raiser from early position. In-game our opponent elects to continuation bet for 3,900, or slightly more than half the pot.

As the in position player and with relatively deep stacks, it is essential that we make the most of our positional advantage and nut advantage by continuing on the flop with an appropriately wide range.

Looking deeper into this situation with the help of a GTO Solver, we find that against skilled opponents we should be continuing here by either calling or raising around 70% of the time. The majority of the time we will continue by calling to utilize our position and either realize our equity or take the pot away through aggression on later streets. Our specific combination, As3s is one of the better hands in the Button’s defense calling range to continue with on this board as we have an overcard, an inside straight draw, and backdoor flush draw.

In some instances we will even have the best hand on the flop with just Ace high, and in many cases will be able to attack UTG+1’s capped range when they check on the turn or river.

Calling is the best play.