Raise or Fold?

[Yepitis]

Good points. And I agree with what you are saying.

The last six times I have been dealt pockets Aces I have lost money. Most of the time I raise the flop when I should wait and raise the turn. Or I raise the flop and scare the last two guys out.

I agree calling is always an option, but always just calling is just really bad play and that is what the books and posts are trying to correct.

[Bob T.]

Damn, I thought it was a real clarkmeister sighting.

Those true raise or fold situations might mostly appear in multiway pots.

Anyway, I think that this is a good place to include one of my favorite plays. I think of it as 'value calling'.

Say you are up against a loose aggressive player, and they raise preflop, and you have something like a middle pair, or maybe AK.

You might be ahead/or behind, and you don't really know where your opponent is.

Instead of threebetting, and getting no information from their fourbet-they might do it anyway- you call, and let them keep the initiative.

I sometimes call, check/call, check/call all the way to showdown. Because they are LAG, they might fire every bullet in an attempt to get you off your hand, and by not raising, you don't miss out on the value of their continued bluff, and you also don't subject yourself to a threebet, which you might have to fold to, and which also might be a threebet bluff.

I think that especially headsup against aggressive opponents, there is a place to sometimes do a lot of calling.

[Frond]

I too have employed this type of a C/C line here once in a while. Like BobT kind of said against the right opponents I will do it.

[fishyak]

First off, great post. My 2 cents: Raise or fold is a mindset, not necessarily an action plan for every hand. Raise or fold is a great procedural question that forces us to maintain an aggressive posture if we belong in the hand at all. At the same time, there are LOTS of situations where call is the best choice. And that might even be the majority of the time.

A prior moderator, whose name I don't recall (had to drop out for $ reasons) played some online sessions of raise or fold. No calling allowed. 1) The table quickly hated him. (lol) 2) He lost. (But the sample was obviously small.)

For the record on OP's examples: A8o from SB in a small pot = fold. On QA with top pair behind the c/r, call strikes me as the best answer, especially with position on the c/r'er.

Telling ourselves to raise or fold forces us to learn to be more TAG and I know I need help on that learning curve. But we face lots of hands where "call" is the best call.