Poker Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
In the above example
In the above example a noted SVB open raised from the hijack (MP) in a 6-max cash game with effective stacks around 100 BBs. You called in the CO with 7d7c. The flop came 4dJh5c, your opponent continuation bet, and you called. The turn brought the Kd, and your opponent bet again. At this point since you know our opponent will bet the turn pretty slim he's going to have a fairly wide betting range of 99+, 44–55, J8o+, 5dAd, 67o+, KTo+, AQo, AdQd, QTo+, AdTd, ATo+,T9s, A8s+, and probably a couple of more hands. You probably have around ~25% equity against our opponent’s range, and you know they are aggressive, since most SVB's are, and you will likely face a bet on the river.
It's a common example
It's a common example where of course you're going to call the flop with second pair, but now you're in a spot facing a second barrel against someone who is aggressive, but also value bets very slim. Your hand doesn't have much improvement equity when behind (only about 5%). If you take a look at your opponent’s hand range though, you should notice that they are going to have to fold at least half of that range facing a raise, and if they come back over the top, it's a super simple fold since your equity will be nearly non- existent.