9♠8♠ SB vs BTN, flop on Q♣ 9♦ 5♠, 105 bb
The spot
- You: SB
- Opponent: BTN
- Your hand: 9♠8♠
- Board: Q♣ 9♦ 5♠
- Effective stack: 105 bb
- Pot: 4.5 bb
Hero chooses between call, raise, and controlled passivity.
What action keeps the highest practical EV?
See the answer
Best play: Raise
Why
Q♣9♦5♠ is a middling, fairly dry board where the BTN raiser has the range edge but plenty of unpaired overcards that miss; hero is OOP in the SB. With 9♠8♠ hero flops middle pair — the 9♠ pairs the 9♦ — plus a backdoor flush draw and backdoor straight equity. Middle pair with extra outs is a fine candidate to mix in a check‑raise: it has enough equity to want to charge the BTN's many air combos and to deny the overcards' two-card-equity, while still being able to continue on turns. Raising as a semi-bluff/thin-value mix is defensible from OOP.
Key idea
Middle pair plus backdoors OOP can mix a check‑raise to charge air and deny overcard equity, not only check-call.
Common mistake
Treating middle pair as a pure check-call only, never raising, and letting the BTN's overcards realize free equity.