DECISION POINT: You’re in the third hour of a deepstack turbo tournament with blinds at 500/1,000 and a 1,000 big blind ante. Because of the tournament’s fast pace, your tablemates have changed frequently, leaving you without any meaningful reads on your opponents. Action folds to the Button, who raises to 2,300. You reraise to 8,000 from the Small Blind with A♣K♣, the Big Blind folds, and the Button calls. The flop comes Q♥6♥4♠, and action is on you.

What's your move here?

PRO ANSWER: We are at the beginning of the third hour of a turbo deep-stacked tournament. The blinds are 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big blind ante. Given the fast nature of the tournament, players have been shuffling in and out and we don’t have any significant reads on anyone at the table.

The action folds to the Button who opens to 2,300. We have A♣K♣ in the Small Blind which is a premium hand that can easily be raised for value. While there are some hands we might move all-in with at this stack depth, AKs is strong enough that we’d prefer to make a non all-in raise. We make it 8,000 chips, the Big Blind folds, and Button calls.

The flop is Q♥6♥4♠. When deciding if we want to make a continuation bet, the primary factor to focus on is which player has the range advantage. While our opponent does call with some Qx hands, a majority of their range are pairs TT and lower, as well as a lot of connected suited cards (JTs/T9s) plus some Axs hands. We retain a significant range advantage since we can still have all the big pocket pairs and AQo.

With our range advantage, we will be continuation betting a large percentage of the time. In fact, when we take a look at this spot in a solver the results recommend we c-bet 90% of our overall range.

When we are continuation betting so frequently we tend to use a smaller sizing as well. This is a situation where we can continuation bet around one third of the pot and expect to take down the pot frequently enough to make it a profitable play.

Continuation betting small is the best play.