DECISION POINT: Early in an online Tournament where blinds are 15/30, an Under the Gun player min-raises to 60. A Middle Position player and Cutoff call. It folds to you in the Big Blind and you call with K♥Q♥. On the K♦5♥6♦ flop you lead out with top pair. UTG goes all-in and Cutoff calls putting them all-in. Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We called a minimum raise from an early position player preflop and hit top pair on the flop in a multiway pot. We should IMMEDIATELY be thinking of two factors in this situation.

The first factor is that one-pair is rarely the best hand at showdown in multiway pots. The second factor is that with a stack to pot ratio (SPR) of greater than 6 on the flop we would want to have at least two pair to be favored getting all the money in postflop

With those factors in mind, our lead on the flop is debatable at best. Since one pair is rarely going to be good at showdown and the larger SPR doesn’t favor us getting all the chips in, building a pot on an early street is not what we want to do with our hand in this situation.

Once we bet the flop and not one, but TWO players move all-in, this should serve as a giant, neon flashing fold sign at the table. We have five outs in the best of situations along with a backdoor flush draw (for effectively 6 outs). This is a very common mistake players make in the early stages of both single and multi-table tournaments.

We don’t want to become attached to one pair hands and bust out early when we can conserve our chips for far more favorable situations.

Folding is the correct play.

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