Sunday Special Mike Goodman's Second Pair Call Down
Mike Goodman returns for a fourth time. Give him a break and submit your own hands!
On POTD this week1 Sam has been looking at hands where he’s barreled off twice and then been faced with a river decision. I thought I’d choose a hand where I’m on the other side of the coin. So, here’s a hand from relatively early in a $10 tournament with re-entry still open where I flopped a medium strength hand BB vs. Button and had to decide how eager I should be to check call my tournament life away street after street.
GG Poker - 250/500 Ante 75 NL (8 max) - Holdem - 8 players
UTG (UTG): 38.9 BB
UTG+1 (UTG+1): 38.42 BB
MP (MP): 30.26 BB
MP+1 (MP+1): 10.29 BB
CO (CO): 29 BB
BTN (BTN): 62.83 BB
SB (SB): 47.35 BB
Hero (BB): 27.75 BB
8 players post ante of 0.15 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB
Dealt to Hero: Td8s
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, BTN raises to 2.2 BB, fold, Hero calls 1.2 BB
Flop (6.1 BB, 2 players): Ad 8h 3d
Hero checks, BTN bets 2.4 BB, Hero calls 2.4 BB
Turn (10.9 BB, 2 players): 2s
Hero checks, BTN bets 8.18 BB, Hero calls 8.18 BB
River (27.25 BB, 2 players): Js
Hero checks, BTN bets 20.44 BB, Hero calls 14.82 BB and is all-in
BTN shows: AcKh
BTN wins 56.9 BB
What I thought during the hand
Preflop:
I have a middling hand in the big blind and the button opened for a normalish amount. I have a limited number of brain cells and will not devote more of them to thinking about this spot. Call.2
Flop:
I have middle pair on an A high flop. I cannot imagine on this flop I ever lead with my hand and probably not with my range. I also cannot imagine I will ever be doing anything other than calling with this hand when they bet. They bet small. I call. Hurray.3
Turn:
Turn card seems blackish. I bet it helps a lot of my check range raise and less so my check call range, so I’m probably not betting. I check.4 They bets big. Blech. This sets up half pot or so left to play for on the river if I call, that feels gross. Without that I’m pretty sure I’m just supposed to call and figure out rivers here. With that? Should I just fold? I can have a lot of better hands than an 8 here5, it doesn’t seem insane to just give up. Am I setting myself up with ugly reverse implied odds if I call here, where I’m going to have to stick it in on pretty much all rivers6, but they get to check behind and give up when they miss draws and stuff…are they even supposed to fire big here with their draws?7 Still second pair here, in the grand scheme of things seems pretty good, they should still have a lot of button raising nonsense. Does that mean I should shove so they have to call off with a wider range? Probably not, there’s probably plenty of one pair stuff that beats me that calls a shove that also checks behind on rivers, so there’s no reason to stack myself, I can call and hope I guess. I call.8
River:
Well, I’ve got half the pot to play for, I guess I check call on this card. I check call. Oh well.9
Study Session
I didn’t learn a ton! Preflop is preflop, whatever man. This isn’t a hand you ever do anything else with as far as I can tell.
Flop is an obvious check, and a range check as well. And then it’s a pure call. Your check raising range is what you expect it to be. Two pairs, bottom pair with three to a wheel, some gutshots, a mix of your flush draws sometimes. You don’t check raise all your aces especially because you big aces 3-bet preflop. So a lot of your A6/A5/A4 type stuff calls flop here. Nothing really funky.
Turn is a little weird but you pretty much always check. There’s a tiny sliver of leading with like 54o that turned a wheel and your flush draws that became flush draws + gutshots, but mostly they all check.10 Against the big bet I remain flummoxed. Solver has T8o as a mix between call and fold, but always calls my specific combo, I think for some Td interaction that I can’t quite suss out, and I’m pretty sure nobody in a 10 dollar tournament is worrying about.11 But I’m looking at a solve for 30BBs and I started the hand with 27.5, plus they bet a little bigger at every point than the solver suggests so I’m looking at calling 8.18 into 10.9 instead of 7.9 into 9.5 which are the solver approved sizes. So, calling here is just uglier than it is in basic solver land I’m looking at. I should probably just fold I think?12
River, once again solver is indifferent between call and fold but calls specifically with the Td.13 Probably once I’m here I have to call with only half pot left to play for instead of two-thirds. But that’s also why I’m probably just supposed to fold on the turn. Add in that we’re playing at the $10 dollar level and the common wisdom is that people just don’t really find enough bluffs (or maybe people rightly bluff less because people will do nonsense like call them down with T8o…), and just folding the turn seems fine.14
If you made it to the end of the post and are interested in being the subject of a future Sunday Special, let me know. Do not be shy if you have a lack poker skill or accomplishments. No solver analysis is required from you and I’d much rather have hobbyist poker players, who are good writers that can produce clean copies and clearly articulate their thought process than editing the writing of 99% of accomplished poker players.
This was written the last week of January 2026, which is not the week you are reading this.
T7o and T6o would mix some low frequency three-bet bluffs, but T8 is too strong.
Middle pair will occasionally raise in spots like this, but usually not when facing a larger c-bet size
Any way you cut it your flop check-call range here is going to have a lot of 8x and 3x. The 2 fills 54, but it’s mostly good for your flop check-raising range because it’s pretty blank and you often have top pair when you check-raise the flop.
Sort of. You have a better hand than an 8 maybe 20% of the time, which is a lot, but you need to call this turn bet more than 20% of the time.
I think this is common logic from recreational players and it has some basis in reality, but it’s always important to remember that sometimes you are supposed to check-call the turn and check-fold the river with made hands. If you always call the river with your loose turn calls the mistake might be playing too loose on the river not on the turn.
He tends to fire high equity draws that don’t mind stacking off like Qd2d or 7d5d or even KdTd, but 9d6d type hands mostly check.
I agree with all this. If you are unsure if your hand is worth a call, it’s almost certainly not worth a raise. Sometimes you need to check-call and play guessing games on the river.
My technical note here would be the J river isn’t a total blank because it might pair some bluffs like say JdTx. The Td is not a meaningless side card because he should give up hands that have the Td in them
I’d imagine this is a play that converges out entirely if the sim runs for longer.
Cleaner two pair outs is an added equity boost that matters even when you’re playing vs someone who’s never used a solver. However most humans barrel flush draws too often and don’t barrel enough unpaired nonsense like say Qc6c, so it’s possible you block too many bluffs with the Td. However more generally, pure folding vs people who are only bluffing with equity is probably a good exploit. If it’s a neutral EV defend when you occasionally have 90% vs your opponent’s bluffs. Over folding is a good counter when they’re missing those barrels.
There’s also an exploitable thing here, which is in my experience when people size up they tend to be getting greedy and have a good hand.
In this case they give up on the river with missed flush draws, but keep betting hearts/clubs/spades, so you prefer bluff catching with a diamond.
I think there is a broader dynamic at play here, which is people tend to under-bluff ace high boards because people like bluffing with equity and blasting off two undercards to top pair with no draw is not appealing. However, in shallow stack spots, where it appears as if one player might be deficient in top pair and one player is loaded in top pair, people love bluffing to make their opponent call down with second and third pair. All of this is to say this hand seems fine from a solver perspective, but what matters here is are you playing a type of player who systematically over or under-bluffs ace high boards because at these stakes, it’s probably one or the other.