[Xylocain]

tl;dr ...

You are probably right ...

but another important thing to keep in mind is that when you are behind its only in your interest to drive players out:

-- If they will improve to a better hand than you when you improve
or
-- They have good redraws on you relative to the pot size when you improve.

so if you are drawing to 5 outs on the flop and they are drawing to 5 outs or less on the turn when you improve, the pot has to be pretty decent for you to want to blow people out.

Remember, that when you raise with the 2nd best hand, you will often be re-raised forcing you to pay 2 bets for the privilige to draw, if you call on the other hand -- then callers behind you will pad the pot for you which compensates to some extent for failiure to protect.

It is usually more important to focus on valuebetting anyway.

[i][edit] your examples are bad, because we have ridiculously high equity in them.* with hands like FDs or stright draws that has typically ~33% equity** its usually more profitable to keep people in because they will have very few outs on you when you improve so you have really no reason to raise them out (and if they have a better flush draw, they are NEVER folding)

* With 45% equity you are raising for value not protection in a 3-handed+ pot!
** so it sucks to be HU against a better hand, but it rocks to get 6 callers .. hmm ... its even better still to get 6 callers with a cap [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img])