[maverickai]

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You don't have a made hand, so there's nothing to protect.

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You don't have the best hand, which is why the raise isn't for hand protection. You raise here because doing so might clean up outs (for example, SB holds AK & BB has QQ, or BB has AK & SB has AQ, or when SB has a singleton [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]), it might buy you a free card, and every so often (not very often at these stakes) it might buy you the pot when BB was betting unimproved overcards or an underpair. In any case, getting things heads up will increase the number of times you win this pot, even if only by a couple of percentage points. Since our draw is strong enough that we'll clearly be seeing the river, it's better to get there heads up vs. 3-handed.

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At these stakes, players who are holding on to hands like AK, QQ, AQ on a board like this will almost never give up. I think even a player who held ATs, and hit the T, will not give up too. Basically, raising and calling is pretty close here. If the stakes were higher, raising would have increase more percentage points as I will be more likely to see the river HU.

Is using equity appropriate to explain the situation that I'm facing on the flop here? I'm trying to link the concepts together so that I can apply when I'm in the game. From what I understand from SSHE, equity is used for deciding a bet or raise, while pot odds is used for calling when on a draw.