B. Raise This play really gives no information about your hand, but it can gain a lot of information about your opponent’s hand. Because you raised pre-flop, people perceive you as holding a strong hand of some type. But as I mentioned earlier, if an Ace didn’t flop most of those who will bet into you are figuring you “missed”, while they may or may not have made a hand. Your raise goes a long way toward confirming your hand was, and is, strong. This is a point where the size of your raise also “talks.” A minimum raise says one thing and an all-in raise says something else. To be sure, either might get called, so you can’t always go all-in and expect to win the hand, but nether can you expect to chase away many players with just a minimum-sized raise. You really want your raise to accomplish one of two things: force your opponent to fold or force your opponent to make a bad decision. As an example of the latter, let’s say your opponent is on a Straight draw and has bet into you as a semi-bluff. If you just call, you might be “pricing” the pot, thus making a draw profitable. But if you raise, you’ll alter the odds and, if your raise is big enough, your opponent may fold just because the favorable pot odds are no longer available. Oh, I know many of the “newbies” out there don’t give a damn about pot odds, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore them, too.

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