DECISION POINT: You are in a wild and loose $2/$5 cash game where opponents are playing 100+BB pots with a single pair and bluffing on multiple streets. Most stacks are around $500 (100BBs) with two other players having a stack over 200BBs. The UTG player opens to $65, the Cutoff calls, and it folds to you in the Big Blind with $1,900 and you call with J♦9♦. You check the K♥K♦9♠ flop, the UTG player c-bets $165, the Cutoff calls, and action is back on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing in a very wild and loose $2/$5 cash game. Players are getting 100+ big blinds in with a single pair and there are a lot of multi-street bluffs going on. Many of the stacks are around $500. Our stack is $1,900, almost 400BBs, and there are two other stacks with 200+ big blinds in play. We are dealt Jd9d in the Big Blind. The UTG player with a $2,700 stack makes it $65 and it folds around to the Cutoff who calls. The Small Blind folds and action is on us.

Calling another $60 in the Big Blind wouldn’t be an option in most games, however with the dynamics of this table our implied odds are incredibly high. We also close the action, so we are guaranteed to see a flop. If both opponents only had $500 in their stack this would be a clear fold. With the effective stacks being nearly 400 big blinds and facing opponents who are willing to risk large portions of their stack with wide ranges, we can profitably call.

We do elect to call and the flop comes KdKh9s.

In this 3-handed situation it is best to check our entire range on this flop. We do check and the UTG player continuation bets $165, which is just under the size of the pot. The Cutoff calls and action is on us. While we did flop two-pair, this flop is far better for the UTG range than it is for our Big Blind Defense range. Additionally, the Cutoff is still in the hand and has already called the flop bet. If this was a heads up pot we could make a case for calling and seeing a turn card. In this scenario two players have already invested over 30BBs each on the flop and our hand has very few ways to improve enough to be comfortable getting over $1,800 more in the middle.

Preflop we made a good decision to call with a speculative hand in a favorable situation with tremendous implied odds. While we did connect with the flop, the texture is very poor for our hand and our range. We could be drawing nearly dead and now that two players have shown interest in what could quickly become a very large pot, it’s time to give up on this hand and limit our loss to the $65 we invested preflop.

Folding is the best play.