DECISION POINT: You called Preflop with A♥7♥ along with 6 opponents and the flop comes K♥J♥8♣. The Big Blind bets, you and 3 opponents call. The turn is the 8♥. The Big Blind checks, MP1 bets, you call, and the Button moves all-in. Both the Big Blind and MP1 folds. Action is on you, what do you do?

PRO ANSWER: The first step when faced with an all-in bet is to calculate your pot odds. In this case, there is about $450 in the middle and it costs us $235 to call. This means our pot odds are a little less than 2 to 1 (450 to 235 = 1.9 to 1).

Given we are getting nearly 2 to 1 pot odds, our hand needs to win at showdown a little more than 33% of the time to show a profit.

Given that our opponent simply called preflop and on the flop, their range of hands consists of fewer combinations of full houses or quads. Instead, their range has more trips (8x hands like 98 suited) and lower flushes. Hands like KK, JJ and 88 would often have raised on a previous street (preflop or flop).

This makes our nut flush the best hand much more often, since we currently beat all lower flushes and 8x hands.

Knowing how our opponent’s actions skew their hand range towards worse hands, we can expect our hand to win at showdown well over half the time.

This makes calling the all-in a very profitable play in the long term.

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