DECISION POINT: You see a multiway flop with JT suited and flop a flush draw. The Big Blind bets, two players call and action is on you. What do you do?

PRO ANSWER: Whenever you are postflop with a draw and facing a bet, you should weigh the merits of calling versus raising. If both of those options are unprofitable, then you should fold.

In this case, we can analyze calling first. There is a total of $182 in the pot and it costs us $40 to call, giving us pot odds of 182-40 or approximately 4.5 to 1. Since we have 9 outs to hit a diamond flush on the turn, our probability of hitting is 9 x 2 (using the Rule of 2) or 18%. We can round to about 20%, meaning we miss 80% of the time and hit about 20% of the time. Our chance of hitting is therefore about 80 to 20 or 4 to 1 against hitting. Since we are getting pot odds better than that (4.5 to 1), this is a profitable call.

Since calling is profitable, we should never fold, so we can eliminate that as an option. To analyze whether raising is more profitable, we must estimate the chance that we can create fold equity if we raise. In other words, are we likely to get all of our opponents to fold if we raise? Since we have 3 other players that expressed interest in this pot on the flop, we are unlikely to win this pot with a raise on the flop.

In addition, the preflop raiser entered the pot from early position preflop, then bet into a multiway pot on the flop. This typically represents a hand range that our opponent considers premium and is therefore unlikely to fold.

Since raising is unlikely to get our opponents to fold, it is not as profitable as calling. We should take the profitable pot odds situation we are offered and just call.

Calling is the best play.