DECISION POINT: In a live 6-max $25/$50 cash game with aggressive players you are dealt K♠K♣ in the Cutoff. The player in the Hijack raises to $150, you reraise to $450, and the Button (who frequently reraises) 4-bets to $1,100. Both Blinds and the original raiser fold. Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing a $25/$50 6-max cash game at a very aggressive table. The Button has been frequently 3-betting and 4-betting preflop. We’ve already folded to several of their 3-bets earlier in the session before observing that their raising frequency is much higher than default.

We are dealt black kings in the Cutoff and the Early Position player folds. The Hijack opens to $150. In this spot we could sometimes consider calling the raise to set up a potential squeeze from the Button. However, up to this point in the session we haven’t been cold calling raises (especially in the Cutoff) and we have no read on how observant the Button has been regarding our calling frequency to warrant attempting to induce a squeeze play.

Flat calling this raise could also potentially result in some awkward situations where we get called in multiple spots and have to play a multiway pot deep stacked. We decide to make a standard 3-bet to $450, the Button cold 4-bets to $1,100 and everyone else folds.

This is a spot where we will be looking to get the chips all-in preflop in many cases. A cold 4-bet is usually very strong so we can often just get the money in with the best hand quite frequently. In this situation our read is that the Button has been seen 3-betting and 4-betting at much higher frequencies. Given that, if they are cold 4-bet bluffing with hands like A5s and we move all-in, the Button will likely find a fold with a fair portion of their range.

The pot will be $2,425 on the flop with $3,900 effective stacks if we call here. After calling we can take a passive line by checking most flops. In most cases our opponent will likely continue with aggression on the flop and quickly become pot-committed with their entire range, including many of the hands they may potentially fold if we were to move all-in preflop.

An important part of this play is the ability to continue on some scary flops with appropriate frequency, or else we would be better off just moving all-in preflop.

The point of calling preflop is to trap our opponents into committing with all their bluffing hands, therefore when they do potentially bluff we may have to make some tough calls postflop.

Calling is the best play.