DECISION POINT: In a live $1/$2 cash game the Under the Gun and MP1 players limp and you raise to $16 with A♣K♠ from MP2. Action folds to the original limpers who both call. Your opponents check the K♣8♣4♣ flop and you continuation bet $20. UTG moves all-in for $100, MP1 pushes for $158 and action is on you with $474 behind.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing at an 8-handed cash game table with a mix of deeper stacks ($300+) and shallower stacks (~$150). We have the table covered with $510. We are dealt AcKs in MP2 and both the UTG and MP1 players limp.

It’s not uncommon to see multiple limpers at low stakes cash games. One mistake players often make is when raising limpers preflop is not raising big enough to thin the field. AKo is not a hand we want to be playing 4-5 way to the flop. A typical raise for these sorts of games is around $10 and with two limpers our default raise should be around $14. Here, we decide to make it $16 and everyone folds except the two original limpers who both call.

The flop is Kc8c4c and both UTG and MP1 check. We have top pair with a nut flush draw and with $51 in the pot the stack to pot ratio (SPR) is around 3. That makes our hand quite strong in relation to stack sizes and more than worthy of a continuation bet.

On these monotone boards you can often bet very small (sometimes as low as 20-25% of pot) and it’s still effective. This is because it’s very hard for opponents to call without top pair or a decent club even against a small bet. We elect to go a little bigger and bet just under half pot size or $20. The UTG player moves all-in for $100 and MP1 also moves all-in for $158.

With these stacks our opponents could easily be moving all-in with a hand like a single King for top pair, or a hand like KxQc that we are way ahead of. Even if one of our opponents already has a flush we have seven outs twice which is roughly 28% to hit, meaning if we’re getting 3:1 or better on our call we still have odds.

In this situation there is $329 in the pot and we have to call $138 more, meaning we almost have the 3:1 necessary to call even if our opponents tabled a flush. If we are ever ahead in this spot, folding our hand would be catastrophic and with the shallow stacks in this situation UTG and MP1 should be capable of moving all-in with worse hands a reasonable percentage of the time.

If we had some sort of read that our opponents could never shove this flop with worse than a flush or a set we could consider folding, but absent that information our odds are simply too compelling and our hand too strong to fold.

Calling is the best play.