DECISION POINT: In a Cash Game, it folds to the Hijack who raises. The Cutoff calls, and you call from the Button with A♣3♣. The Blinds fold. The Flop comes 5♣3♦2♣. The Hijack bets and the Cutoff folds. Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: You call a raise with A3 suited and your opponent continuation bets on this flop. What do you do?

With a pair, the nut flush draw, and a gutshot wheel draw, we have a legitimately big drawing hand. In general, we can play our big draws of 12 or more outs in the same way we would play big made hands.

Big draws have significant equity against any reasonable opponent hand ranges and can be played aggressively. If you can cause your opponent to fold some of the time through aggression while holding a big draw, you can create a very profitable situation.

Also, playing big draws similarly to our big made hands provides balance to our game plan and makes us difficult to read at the table. When we raise this flop, we can have big made hands like sets or straights in addition to our big draws. This leaves our opponents with very difficult decisions with many of their hands.

In this particular hand, raising is even more profitable than usual. Our opponent raised from the Hijack seat preflop and continuation bet on the flop against two opponents. This action represents a fairly wide range of hands, including pure bluffs.

In other words, there’s no reason to believe our opponent has only big hands. Therefore, raising will cause our opponent to fold often, probably even the majority of the time. This makes raising the most profitable option.

Raising is the best play.