If It’s Good Enough to Play…
…it’s good enough to raise. If you’ve got a poker hand that you think will win, you need to bet as if you think it’ll win, for two reasons:
1. If you’re going to win the hand, you want to ensure that there’ll be as much money in the pot as you can get.
2.If you’ve got a good pocket hand, you don’t want some joker with some crappy starting cards to luck out on the flop, turn or river, so get them out of the hand with a solid pre-flop bet.
It has happened so many times in so many poker games that it should be common knowledge, but every game I play, I see people limping in with strong hands, only to see someone with a weak pocket play their garbage and win because someone didn’t force them out with aggressive betting.
Keep in mind that this isn’t going to work every time, but more often than not, the weaker Texas Holdem hand will bow out before the flop when presented with a sizable bet, and then you can play the rest of the hand with some idea of what the other guys are holding.
And knowing what the other guys have is pretty much the whole point.
