Would You Play King-Jack Suited Preflop in a Multi-Way Pot?
DECISION POINT: You are playing in a deep-stacked tournament. A player in middle position raises and both the cutoff and button call. You are in the small blind with K?J? and the action is on you.
PRO ANSWER: In this deep-stacked tournament example, we hold KxJx-suited in the small blind after a raise and two callers. We must decide between folding, calling or reraising. We ensure the profitability of a call by only calling preflop with speculative hands in multi-way pots for less than 5 percent of the effective stack.
In this case, we can call following these criteria. However, we will be playing out of position postflop which somewhat hurts the profitability of this situation. Additionally, there is value in reraising preflop since we can win an uncontested pot or set up a flop continuation bet.
If stacks had been shallower and the preflop call amount was a higher percentage of effective stacks, reraising preflop would have been a better play than calling. In this situation, because stacks are so deep, calling with our K?J? and playing it for its speculative hand value is the better play. Due to the multi-way pot, we should be very willing to fold one-pair hands postflop and only continue with big hands and legitimate draws of 8 or more outs.
Calling is the best play.
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