Beware of the Raise

You look at your cards and see a hand that you are ready to play with. Someone limps in early position and then someone else’s raises behind and the action is over to you. You look at your hand again and although it hasn’t changed it no longer looks as appealing as it once did so it hits the muck.

Those looking at the betfair poker freerolls note that this happens time and time again because of the raise. The raise leads you to believe that your opponent must have a strong hand. In order to beat a strong hand you need a stronger hand and that is why your hand bit the dust.

Next time this happens take your time before discarding our holding just because someone has raised. Firstly, consider your opponents ranges. You need to have a good estimate of the limping range first of all. Is the opponent capable of limping with monster hands or does he limp with a wide range of mediocre hands? What about his opponents raise? Is his opponent a regular and therefore capable of trying to isolate the limper with a wide range? Is the opponent a nit who very rarely raises? Then back to the limper - how is he going to react to this raise?

Those over at betfairpoker.com note how this is why having an understanding of how your opponents play is so critical. When you understand this at a high level your hand ranking can sometimes be irrelevant. Lets imagine that you are holding 87s and you are faced with the dynamic described above and the regular who has raised has a penchant to do this to isolate limpers. Now 87s looks like a potentially profitable three-bet instead of a hand that lives the rest of its short life in the muck.