DECISION POINT: In a live $1-2 game a Middle Position player raises to $6 and a Recreational Player in the Hijack seat calls. It folds to you in the Big Blind with T♦9♦ and you call. You check your flush draw on the 4♦A♣7♦ flop and MP2 bets $10. The Hijack raises to $35 and action is on you. What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: In a $1-2 cash game we are dealt T9s in the Big Blind. MP2 raises to $6, recreational player in the Hijack calls and it folds around to us. This is a great spot to call with a speculative hand. The pot is already multi-way, it is for a relatively small percentage of the effective stack (roughly 2%), and we are closing the action guaranteeing we get to see a flop. This is nearly an ideal situation to call with this hand aside from being out of position postflop.

The flop is 4dAc7d giving us a flush draw. This is an excellent spot to check to the preflop raiser and see what develops. In some cases we may check-raise and depending on the bet sizing. If the recreational player calls we may be getting good pot odds to call here as well. We check and the preflop raiser bets $10. The recreational player then makes it $35. Now the action is on us and we have a decision to make.

Calling here really isn’t a great option. There is $64 in the pot currently and we have to call $35. This is worse than 2:1 pot odds for us and we’re 4:1 against hitting our flush on the next card. We are 2:1 against hitting the flush by the river but it is quite likely the recreational player will push the rest of their $79 in on the turn, which makes it unlikely we get an opportunity to see a river card without putting in additional chips.

We can potentially call the $35 and only put money in on the turn when we complete our flush. In that case we would need greater than 4:1 pot plus implied odds. Since we have to call $35 that means we would need to win AT LEAST $140 here to justify calling based on implied odds. There is $64 in the pot and the $79 left behind in Villain's stack ($143 total).

The problem with that scenario is that sometimes the recreational player has two pair or a set and has redraw outs even when we hit, or has a hand like AdXd and we’re drawing virtually dead. Pushing all-in here is unlikely to generate any fold equity, especially versus a recreational player.

It often feels unfortunate to call with a speculative hand preflop, flop a reasonable draw, and then fold, but in this spot there is no profitable way to continue with our hand.

Folding is the best play.

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