DECISION POINT: You’re playing in a live $5/$10 cash game that has just started, and the effective stack is $1,000. Everyone folds to the player in MP2, who opens to $25. Action folds to you on the Button with K♣J♣, and you make the call. The Blinds fold, and the flop comes A♦Q♣5♠. Your opponent continuation bets $25 and action is on you. What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We’re playing in a live $5/$10 cash game. The table has just started, and the effective stack is $1,000. We’re dealt K♣J♣ on the Button. Everyone folds to MP2, who opens to $25. It’s folded to us, and we have our first decision to make.

In high rake environments (like most live cash games), we generally don’t want to do much calling preflop from positions other than the Big Blind except in very specific cases where the calling criteria are met, such as multiway pots for a very small percentage of our stack. On the Button specifically, we can start to include some suited broadway hands and middle pocket pairs in our calling range. Our specific hand, KJ suited, fits into that category, so we elect to call.

The flop comes A♦Q♣5♠. This board favors the preflop raiser’s range. In theory, our opponent shouldn’t continuation bet with a high frequently here despite having a range advantage, since stacks are deep and they’re out of position. In practice, however, most live cash game opponents will continuation bet often in this spot. In this hand, our opponent bets $25.

We only have king high, but we also have a backdoor flush draw and an inside straight draw. Additionally, we have some float equity - the potential to win the pot later by calling now and taking it away on the turn if our opponent checks. Considering all of these factors and our opponent‘s small bet size, this is a clear continue. Folding here would mean we’re overfolding to continuation bets far too frequently.

Calling is the best play.