DECISION POINT: You are in a $1/$2 cash game that is very loose with the standard opening raise size at $14. You are first to act in the UTG seat and you open to $14 with K♥K♦. It folds around to the Small Blind who calls and the Big Blind folds. On the A♦9♦2♦ flop your opponent open shoves all-in for $76 and action is on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing a low stakes, $1/$2 live cash game. The table is very loose and splashy and the standard preflop raise size for the table is $14 (7BBs). We’ve built our stack up to $350 and most of the other stacks are in the $200 range except the SB who has $90. We are dealt red kings UTG and make the standard open to $14. Everyone folds to the Small Blind who flat calls. The Big Blind folds.

When the Small Blind just flat calls here it is an indication that their range should be somewhat narrow and condensed. With this stack size it’s likely they would raise with premium combos (KK+) and fold most weak hands, so we can assume a range that includes middle pocket pairs and big broadway holdings. This is a loose game so we can potentially widen that range a bit, however we can’t assume any two cards as even our looser opponents will eliminate pure junk hands from their cold calling range as the first caller in the Small Blind.

The flop is A♦9♦2♦ and the Small Blind open shoves for $76. The first thing we can do in this scenario is look at things from a worst case perspective. If our opponent in the Small Blind would NEVER shove a worse hand than Ax, 99, 22, or diamond combos for a made flush, we have somewhere between 7 and 11 outs. If we split the difference and assume on average when behind in this spot we have 9 outs, then we are roughly 36% to win the hand using the rule of four.

In this scenario we would need around 1.8:1 pot odds to call, and we currently have to call $76 to win $106 which is closer to 1.4:1 pot odds.

More realistically, it’s unlikely our opponent is just open shoving all of their made flushes. With 11 outs (9 diamonds and the 2 remaining Kings) we’d have around 42% equity which is almost exactly the 1.4:1 pot odds in this situation and would make calling the shove roughly break even. We can assume 11 outs is often too optimistic in this scenario as the Small Blind will have one diamond in their hand some of the time, so if they were to never shove a hand worse than ours we would have to fold.

What if the Small Bind’s shoving range includes some Qx combos with the queen of diamonds and TT-QQ that also contain a diamond? If we assume a range including AT+ combos both suited and offsuit, with or without diamonds, all combos of 99, TT-QQ containing a diamond, and KQ with the queen of diamonds we become a 52% favorite.

Based on our analysis of potential ranges we can make the following conclusions. If we have solid information that Small Blind would never semi-bluff in this situation we should fold. If they semi-bluff even a small amount this becomes a very clear call. Since we don’t have a specific read on this player, we should assume they play in a reasonably balanced fashion which includes semi-bluffing with some frequency on this monotone flop.

Calling is the best play.