DECISION POINT: You are in the early stages of an online 6-max $1/$2 cash game session with the average stack around $200. You have A♦J♠ in the Small Blind. The first player to act raises to $6, everyone calls, and action is on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are early in an online $1/$2 6-max session. Most of the stacks at the table are around $200. We are dealt AdJs in the Small Blind. The first player to act raises to $6 and gets called by MP2, Hijack, Cutoff and action is on us. We’re faced with a seemingly tricky decision as AJo is a solid hand in a 6-max game but significant action has already occurred in front of us.

The first step to analyzing a situation following your session is to use a GTO (Game Theory Optimal) solver to create a solution based on the specific actions in the hand. In this particular case there are no preflop solutions for an open from MP2 in a 6-max game facing 3 callers as there is no GTO range that the Hijack player is supposed to flat call with by default.

Given that fact, the estimate for current preflop GTO solutions must have MP2 either folding or raising their entire range. Digging deeper, we can see however that there is a solution for a Cutoff and Button flat calling vs MP2’s open. In that particular solution our AJo is a clear fold with an expectation of a -0.71 BB loss, which is fairly significant for a pot this size.

In real time we can’t view GTO solutions, so at the table we likely know that this decision depends on the range gap of the initial raiser.

If we had a read that the MP2 player is either opening far more hands than they should or that they were folding far more often than they should when facing a 3-bet, we could begin to consider raising as the favorite in this spot.

Calling would never be a good idea is this spot, as our hand plays extremely poorly in multiway pots from out of position. Players often reason that calling is a good compromise when a hand seems too strong to fold but not strong enough to raise with. In this spot an offsuit broadway hand like AJo will often flop just one-pair versus at least 4 opponents in a situation where we are only likely to get significant action when our hand is beat.

This creates a terrible reverse implied odds situation where we often either win a small pot or lose a big one except the very small percentage of the time we hit two-pair or better.

Taking into consideration that we can eliminate calling as a viable option and understand that preflop absent a significant read we cannot raise profitably in this spot, we discover that folding is the only play remaining.

Folding is the best play.