DECISION POINT: In a live $2-5 game the Under the Gun Player opens to $20, UTG+1 (who we observed as being tight and straightforward) calls, as does MP1. Action folds to you in the Cutoff Seat and you call with 5♣7♣, the Button folds, and both Blinds fold. The flop comes 8♣9♣J♥. The Under the Gun player checks, UTG+1 bets $75, and MP1 calls. Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing in a $2-5 cash game with the majority of players having $500 stacks, 2 players with around $800, and our stack at $1000. We are dealt 5♣7♣ in the Cutoff seat and UTG opens to $20. UTG+1 and MP1 both call and action folds to us.

A suited one gapper is a great hand to play speculatively because it can hit hands like straights and flushes with hard equity versus multiple opponents, as opposed to hands such as AQ offsuit which tend to hit more one pair hands that can be quite vulnerable in multiway pots. With a pot that is already multiway holding a speculative hand and having to call for around 2.5% of the effective stacks this is a pretty straightforward call. Everyone else folds and we’re off to the flop.

The flop is 8♣9♣J♥ giving us a flush draw and a double gutshot straight draw, meaning both the ten and the 6 will make us a straight. The original raiser Under the Gun checks and UTG+1 bets $75. We have opponent specific information that the UTG+1 is very tight and straightforward. MP1 just calls the $75 bet and action is on us. Since we know UTG+1 has shown a tendency to be tight, it is highly likely they are betting a reasonably strong hand of at least top pair or better. It is unlikely UTG+1 has a flush draw unless they hold exactly QcTc, AcJc, or KcJc, although flush draws are very much a part of MP1's overall range along with hands such as QJ/JT/T9/TT/AJ.

The first thing we want to do in this spot is estimate our likely outs and use that to evaluate if calling is profitable. It is fairly likely that we have 9 flush outs and that the other 3 sixes are also outs. It is possible, although quite a bit less likely, that the 3 remaining tens are also outs. This means at best we have 15 outs. At worst we have 1 out when our opponent has exactly QcTc, as only the 6c would be a clean out.

In these spots we often want to discount our outs so we’re estimating, on average, how many outs we likely have. In this spot 12 of our outs are quite likely to be good and 3 are less likely to be good. To be somewhat conservative and make the math easy we can estimate that on average, we have 10 outs.

Using the rule of 2, we can multiply our 10 outs times 2 and estimate that we are roughly 20% to hit one of those outs on the turn. Another way to express that is we hit one of our outs 1 in 5 times which is 4:1 against hitting. Based on this calculation our pot and implied odds combined must equal at least four times the bet amount to make calling in this spot break even. Since we have to call $75 we would need to win $300 on average when we hit to make calling here break even. Given that there is already $227 in the pot, winning an extra $73 when we hit seems quite likely which makes calling profitable.

If we know that calling is profitable then folding can be eliminated as an option. Would raising be better? If we raise in this spot and one of the roughly $800 stacks shoves, the amount of outs we likely have shrinks dramatically. If the stacks were such that we could reasonably just move all-in here then raising might make some sense, but given our read on the UTG+1 player being quite tight and straightforward we are unlikely to generate much fold equity with a raise here and quite likely to put ourselves in a far more precarious situation by raising.

Calling is the best play.

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