DECISION POINT: You are early in a live $1/$2 cash session in a game with a lot of action. An Early Position player, Middle Position player, and the Hijack limp into the pot. The Cutoff, who you’ve observed as being very active, raises to $15 and you reraise to $45 from the Button with A♦K♦. Everyone folds to the Cutoff who calls. Your opponent bets $100 on the A♠8♥2♣ flop and action is on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing at a 9-handed $1/$2 table and are dealt AdKd on the Button. Most of the stacks are around $200 deep and we’ve been at the table for around 30 minutes. The table is quite splashy with a lot of action and the Cutoff has been noticeably active.

The UTG+1, MP2, and the Hijack all limp in and the Cutoff makes it $15. The action is on us, and at this loose table against an active player our hand is well ahead of the Cutoff’s range and definitely worth a raise.

A standard raise size is three times the Cutoff’s total bet amount so we make it $45. Everyone folds to the Cutoff who calls our raise. The flop is As8h2c and much to our surprise, the Cutoff leads for $100.

One mistake many players make in spots like this is they often see monsters under the bed. Human psychology is such that the bad things that happen to us stick out more in our memories than the good things. Consequently we tend to remember all the times that a good outcome was anticipated and we still managed to lose the hand.

In this case it is very important to avoid seeing those monsters under the bed and approach the situation with a rational outlook. If our opponent really had flopped a set or two-pair with a stack to pot ratio (SPR) of less than 2, they most likely would have checked on a board they would expect us to continuation bet, and only stuck in a raise after we had committed more chips to the pot.

This bet screams that the Cutoff probably has some sort of hand with showdown value but doesn’t want to have to call our bets and would love it if the hand was just over with right now. Even if we had a hand like KK/QQ here we shouldn’t be folding as our opponent would often check with a strong Ax combo here as well. Their most likely hand range includes pocket pairs TT/99, 8x combos, and suited combos with backdoor draws such as 54s type hands.

A competent opponent in the Cutoff should recognize that they’re pot committed with most of the hands in this range. However, we don’t want to give our opponent the opportunity to make a fold when they might be drawing to 2-4 outs so while raising is profitable, calling is the most profitable option in this spot.

Calling is the best play.