One of the most feverishly repeated mantras in all of online poker is the ‘Raise or Fold’ idea, in which players say that if your hand is good enough to be in the pot, you should be raising, and if it isn’t, you should fold. The power of the raise adds a whole series of extra leverage and ways to win the pot, whereas ‘just calling’ requires that you have the best hand to stick around.

But sometimes there are Texas Holdem situations where just calling is an even better play.

For instance, if you are in a pot against a online poker player who is going to keep betting at you if you let him, and you have a big hand, it can often be profitable to trap even with non-monster hands and let them lead the action. This has the dual pronged effect of letting a player hang themselves by betting when if you’d bet yourself they would have folded. Yes, it can result in your getting sucked out on, but you’ve got to sometimes play risky in order to make the most, and so sometimes just calling in spots like this is ok.

Likewise, when playing preflop, I like to play a pretty wide range of hands in position, so just calling is right for me as I prefer to get in cheaply even with my bigger medium pairs like 10 10 and JJ that other players would probably reraise with. This allows me greater control over how much money I’m putting in before I have more information about the hand.

Overall, it’s not a black and white picture, and so to stick with the ‘raise or fold’ concept at all times is a little tight-minded, and should be taken with a grain of salt.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Fun, Games Playing, World Of Gambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.