DECISION POINT: In a Cash Game, an Early Position player raises and the Hijack calls. You call from the Cutoff seat with 9♣8♣. The Button and Blinds fold. The Flop comes: 6♣7♣2♥. The Early Position player bets and the Hijack raises. Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: In this hand there was a bet and a raise to us on the flop. We are holding an open ended straight flush draw with 9 outs to a flush and 6 additional outs to a straight. Overall, this gives us 15 outs on the flop.

We are not quite getting the correct direct pot odds to call to see one card, since there is approximately $220 in the pot and it costs us $120 to call. In addition, we are not closing the action if we call $120. The initial bettor may reraise us. We do have some implied odds (more so with our straight outs as compared to the flush outs), so calling will be a slightly profitable play.

However, one of the primary benefits of having big draws is that they have lots of equity against most opponent hand ranges. If you add fold equity by playing aggressively, you can create an extremely profitable situation.

In this situation we can reraise all-in and put significant pressure on both the initial bettor and raiser. We can win this pot uncontested on the flop some of the time. The times we don’t win it uncontested, we will usually have over 50% equity against our opponent’s range. Overall, we can win this pot a large majority of the time when we move all-in.

In order to play big draws the most profitably, you must be willing to play them aggressively in situations where you can create some fold equity.

Moving all-in is the best play.