[stickdude]

[ QUOTE ]
Is there any straight forward answer to this question?

[/ QUOTE ]

No. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

It really is player/situation dependent. Some villains will only raise if they can beat top pair, and you can safely fold against them. Other villains will shove with gutshot draws, so you're better off calling.

My general rule is to avoid big pots with TPTK unless I have a specific reason to get it in against that particular player - meaning, if villain is unknown and showing strong aggression, I'll let TPTK go and let someone else look him up on a later hand. Once someone looks him up, you can get an idea of what kind of hands he'll be aggressive with (be sure to make a note) and you can adjust appropriately.



As an example, here's a hand where I called a river PSB with TPTK on a board that's about as scary as they come -

Hand #1308012204001416: Chelsea (6-Max) 12204
Seat 1: WELLRIGHT (100.00 in chips)
Seat 5: HUGEtitties (147.50 in chips)
Seat 6: swongsr1thng (132.70 in chips)
Seat 8: bum211 (218.05 in chips)
Seat 9: ajml45 (183.60 in chips)
Seat 10: stickdude (92.00 in chips)
ajml45: posts small blind $0.50
stickdude: posts big blind $1
Dealt to stickdude [ T[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] ]
WELLRIGHT: folds
HUGEtitties: folds
swongsr1thng: folds
bum211: calls
ajml45: folds
stickdude: checks
*** FLOP *** [ T[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 9[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], 7[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] ]
stickdude: bets $2.50
bum211: calls
*** TURN *** [ 9[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] ]
stickdude: bets $6
bum211: calls
*** RIVER *** [ 8[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] ]
stickdude: checks
bum211: bets $19.50
stickdude: calls
*** SHOW DOWN ***
bum211: shows [ K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 3[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] ] (Pair of Nines )
stickdude: shows [ T[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] ] (Two Pairs, Tens and Nines )
stickdude wins $55.60 with Two Pairs, Tens and Nines


Had this been my first hand at the table, it's an easy fold on the river. Against this particular player, though, I knew that his smooth calls of the flop and turn bets were almost certainly a flush draw - he would have raised me with a made hand. I also knew he was likely to take a stab with a busted FD if I checked, so it was a pretty easy call at the end. If he makes a much larger bet, I would have folded, but he just used the "bet pot" button - he's not thinking about what bet size would extract the most value with a made straight/full house.