DECISION POINT: You’re in a live $1/$2 cash game and have witnessed opponents playing passive, calling preflop raises and 3-bets with wide ranges. Action folds to the player in the Hijack position and they open to $6. The Button calls, Small Blind folds, and you reraise to $30 with A♠K♣. The Hijack folds and the Button calls. You c-bet $25 on the K♥7♥5♠ flop and your opponent calls. The turn is 2♥ and action is on you. What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing in a loose $1/$2 cash game where players are quite passive and calling frequently. Many hands are making it to showdown and we’ve witnessed players calling preflop raises and 3-bets with wide ranges. We are dealt A♠K♣ in the Big Blind and everyone folds to the Hijack, who opens to $6. The Cutoff folds and the Button calls. The Small Blind folds and action is on us.

AK offsuit is a clear 3-bet here. This raise is likely to be called by a lot of dominated hands, and given the players calling down light at this table, we are much more likely to win a big pot if we flop top pair. We make it $30, the Hijack folds, and the Button calls.

The flop is K♥7♥5♠. This is a great flop for both our range and specific hand. Our opponent on the Button just called an open raise and a 3-bet preflop. When an opponent calls two raises on the same street in this way, it typically represents a range that is capped and often condensed. With our read on the table, the Button’s range is likely wider than normal here, but we can get still get called by a lot of hands that we dominate. With a stack to pot ratio (SPR) of just under 3, we can easily get the money in across three streets with a small bet here, so we elect to make it $25 and our opponent calls.

The turn is the 2♥. While at first glance this card might seem quite scary since it completes the obvious draw, our opponent’s range is still extremely wide here and includes many hands that are not flushes that we’re still ahead of with AK. Shutting down on the turn would be a huge mistake as there are still a lot of Kx hands and even 7x hands we can extract value from in the Button’s range. Since our opponent is quite passive, we can safely fold if we bet the turn and they raise.

Against tough opponents that approach might be exploitable, but in loose/passive games we can often value bet thinner and overfold to aggression as an exploitative adjustment.

Betting between $40-$60 is the best play.