DECISION POINT: You’re playing in a live $1/$2 cash game. The table includes mostly loose/passive recreational players with many hands going to showdown, a lot of calling, and very little aggressive action. The UTG player limps, you raise to $10 from MP with K♣Q♠, the Big Blind calls, and the limper folds. The flop comes A♣T♣9♣. The Big Blind bets $14 and action is on you. What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We’re playing a loose/passive live $1/$2 cash game. The table is full of recreational players with many hands going to showdown and lots of calling with very little aggressive action. We are dealt K♣Q♠ in MP1. The UTG player limps and the next player folds with action on us.

As a basic default rule against limpers, we will raise with any of the hands that we cannot call with according to the calling criteria that are included in the first-in raising range for the seat position of the limper.

The first step is to determine whether we can call profitably per the calling criteria, and in this case KQo is not a true speculative hand and does not play well multiway. Looking at the first-in range from the initial limper in UTG we see that KQo is included, so isolating the limper is our preferred default play. We make it $10, everyone folds to the Big Blind who calls, and the initial limper UTG folds.

The flop is A♣T♣9♣ and the Big Blind leads for $14 into the $23 pot. In a typical game where there are some amount of skilled opponents, when the Big Blind calls preflop in this situation they likely have a very condensed and capped range. In a loose/passive game filled with recreational players, the Big Blind’s range a bit wider than it should including many of the sort of hands players want to “see a flop” with such as offsuit broadway cards, suited connectors, and pocket pairs.

When a player leads into the preflop raiser (often called “donk” betting) on flops that favor the preflop raiser, it’s often either an attempt to “see where they are at”, or because they are worried about not getting action on a big hand when they check. On a board like this monotone flop with an Ace and broadway draw which many recreational players find quite “scary”, this donk lead is typically because the Big Blind is worried we won’t bet and another club or straightening card will fall on the turn.

Holding the Kc and an inside straight draw, we still have a lot of equity in this pot, but it is unlikely we have the best hand at the moment. If the board texture was scattered or all low cards and more likely that our opponent was lead/donk betting a medium strength hand to “see where they were at”, there would be a lot of merit to making a semi-bluff raise.

On this particular board, many of the hands the Big Blind is leading with are actually happy to see a raise. Hands such as Ax/T9s combos or even small flushes prefer to get chips in on the flop before a scary card comes on the turn or river. Our hand has significant equity with the Kc and inside straight draw, and we have a lot of potential opportunities to float and take the pot away on the turn if another scary card hits. Given these factors, calling makes a lot more sense than semi-bluffing on this coordinated monotone flop.

Calling is the best play. 

P.S. Check out our December live study session where we focused on Dealing with Limpers. Watch a preview →