Calling vs. Raising
Another player bets out on a hand. It doesn’t matter for our purposes whether they are betting pre-flop or on the river. It doesn’t matter if they are betting on third street in a Stud game or post-flop in Omaha. We are concerned with what happens next. What do you do when facing a raise?
Let’s eliminate fold from our options, you have a playable hand and are not going to lay it down. Your choices are to call or raise. To stay in the hand you simply have to call, but what does a call signify to the player or players in the hand? If the opening bettor was hoping to drive you out, then your call is not going to make them too comfortable with their hand. If they were betting a good hand, they are happy to have to add chips to what they believe will be their pot. If you raise the pot, you are telling the bettor that not only are you not afraid of their hand but you have a hand strong enough to take them on right now. You send a strong message with your raise.
The purpose of raising a bet is to send a message. Now there are several messages and the texture of the table and the game will make those possibilities nearly endless. No matter what has happened before at this table, a raise is a much stronger play than a call; unless, of course, you have a monster hand and the call is just the beginning of a huge trap you are setting.
Now let’s stop thinking about the original bettor, who you are deciding to call or raise; let’s turn our attention to players behind you still to act in this betting round. If you only call, you provide them with more not less incentive to call too. Suppose the pot is 200 and the first player has bet another 100; if you call, the pot becomes 400 (200 + 100 + 100) and the next player in the hand only needs to call 100 to play for the 400 in the pot. A lot of hands look good getting 4 to 1 odds.
If, however, you had made even a minimum raise from 100 to 200, now the pot is at 500, to call the next player will have to put in 200 to win 500. The odds are down to 2.5 to 1 and a lot fewer hands make sense to play for those odds.
A raise not only sends a message, it also changes the odds for all players still in the hand. The message can be mixed: strong hand? bluff? drawing hand? slow play? But the math and the odds are fixed. A raise forces the other players to consider the message(s) but to make decisions based on the odds of committing more chips to the pot. Compared to a raise, the call is a quiet move with less information.
Call or Raise, the choice is yours but consider what the other players will think about your decision. And consider joining a discussion in our poker forum on the topic of calling or raising.
-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #79
