Say you have $500 in a $2-$5 blind Texas Holdem game. In middle position, you make it $20 to go with

Everyone folds to the big blind, who has you covered. He says, "raise." As he goes to his stack to cut off enough chips for his raise, he accidentally shows you his poker hand (though he’s not aware that he did it):

Should you always fold? Or does that decision depend on how much he raises? Clearly if he raises all-in, $480 more, you should fold. You are roughly a 4.5-to-l dog, while you would be getting barely more than even money (520-to-480) to call.

But hopefully just as clearly, if he raises the minimum, $15, you should call like lightning. Why is that?

Including his raise, the pot would be $55 (your $20 plus the big blind’s $35). So you are risking $15 to win $55. But that’s not all, for almost no matter what cards come, you can expect the player with aces to bet the flop. Say he will usually bet the size of the pot: $70. If you don’t flop a jack (or if you do, but he flops an ace also), you’ll fold. But if you flop a set and he doesn’t, you almost always win that $70, plus the $55 that was in the pot, plus even more.

So really you are risking $15 to win at least $55 plus $70, or $125. That’s immediate odds of 125-to-15 or about 7.33-to-l. Since the odds of you flopping a jack without him flopping an ace are about 8-to-l against, calling shows an immediate profit if you can win an average of about $10 more than that over the course of the poker hand.

In Texas Holdem play practice , you’ll win significantly more than $10 more on average. To fail to hit that mark, your opponent would essentially have to refuse to give any more action at all. That is, with A♠ A♣ on a J♣ 7♥ 2♦ flop, he would have to give up immediately every time his flop bet is called or raised. If you meet someone who actually plays that weakly, you can steal almost every pot from them. In any event, while you’ll lose eight times out of nine when you don’t flop a set, you’ll make, on average, significantly more than eight times your $15 investment those times you do, so you have an easy call. So where did your opponent with the aces go wrong? He made the Texas Holdem mistake that we’ll call "offering too high implied odds." That is, he raised too little, so even though you called as a big underdog, you could afford to gamble because you’d be adequately compensated if you got lucky.

When the stacks are deep, you also must know when to get away from poker hands on the turn and river to avoid offering too high implied odds.

Avoid offering your opponents too high implied odds. Make sure that you bet or raise enough with your good poker hands so they can’t profit by playing for a longshot.

How big a raise would be "enough?" Since the pocket jacks will flop a set (with no overset) one time in nine, if he raised an amount equal to one-eighth (offering you odds of 8-to-l) of your total possible win, calling would be break-even at best. Your total available win is $520, the $500 in your opponent’s stack and the $20 you already raised. (Remember, once you bet, the money is no longer yours.) So if he were to raise $65

$65 = $520 / 8

you could not possibly make any money with your jacks. To see that for sure, let’s play poker hand nine times.

Eight of those nine times, you will call the $65 raise, fail to flop a set (or flop a jack while he flops an ace), and fold to your opponent’s $170 (pot-sized) bet. That’s a loss of $520.

$520 = (8)($65)

The last time, you’d flop a jack, raise the pot-sized bet all-in, and (hopefully) get called for a total win of $520 (your opponent’s $500 plus your $20 raise). Actually, you wouldn’t even win the full $520 because sometimes your opponent will catch an ace on the turn or river and win instead.

The bottom line is, if your opponent, in Texas Holdem, reraises only a small amount, you can call him, hoping to get lucky and bust him. If he reraises about $65 or more, though, there’s nothing you can do. You have to fold.

Good luck.

Also recommended:

1. Imperfect Information and Implied Odds in Holdem
2. Implied and Effective Odds Explained
3. Pot Odds
4. The importance of position in Poker
5. Don’t justify your Texas Holdem opponents’ optimistic calls either