Marginal Hands: Raise or Fold Early

Part of the charm of poker is the delicate and tough decisions we face when playing. We have a feeling that our top pair with a bad kicker is the best hand, but we are not sure. We think that our opponent might be bluffing, but how do we know? This insecurity gnawing at us when playing adds to the depth of the game and puts us on the edge of our seats when playing online poker.

A good rule of thumb is, when we are unsure, to either raise or fold. Let us assume that we called a preflop raise from a tight player with JTs after a caller in-between. The flop comes T73 rainbow. The early position raiser bets out, the player between us folds. What should we do?

First of all, we need to realize that our holding is very marginal. Sure, we have top pair, but our kicker is bad and we are facing a tight player. It is not exactly a hand to write home about (unless we have our mom on MSN and want some good parental advice).

In this situation, our options are to raise or fold. There is nothing wrong in folding. A bit on the tight side, sure, but if we put the tight player on a good hand there is no reason to continue playing. We can, however, test the tight player by raising. If the opponent re-raises we just fold, if he calls we do not put another cent in the pot unless we improve to two pair or three of a kind. Playing like this has its advantages: we avoid to pay off our opponents