It’s every poker player’s most pleasurable time — trying to figure out whether to call, fold, or raise back after someone has raised pre-flop. Generally speaking, the most obvious realization here is that you need to assume that they have something. Sure, they might be bluffing you, but would you really want to base everything on that assumption and then be proved wrong? That’s what we thought. Instead of trying to worry about whether or not someone is bluffing, you need to just assume that they actually do have something.

It’s hard to give specific examples, so we’ll go ahead and just kick off with the fundamentals:

Re-raise when you actually have something to re-raise with. If you take nothing else from this article, take that piece of advice with you. Take comfort in the knowledge that you don’t always have to answer every raise that comes along. It’s perfectly okay to fold. In fact, it’s smarter to fold than know that you’re going in counting on luck rather than skill. That’s a weak thing to do and you’re not going to be a weak poker player. It’s just not meant to be.

Re-raise when you know that the action of re-raising is going to make them back down and re-consider. This is because a lot of people do bluff and if you know that you have a strong hand, they will too. Image is a big thing in the world of poker. It’s not set in stone that if you raise back they will back down. They might push in just to see what you’ll do. Look for the other player to do a lot of checking rather than continuing to bet — this is also a sign that they might not have as good of a hand as they thought they did starting out. That’s the trouble with raising before the flop — things can turn completely the other way without too much effort.

There will be times where you’re going to be that person shoving in right with the raisers — and there are going to be times where you fold. Just because you fold a hand doesn’t mean that you weren’t strong enough — it means that you’re willing to use your brain to reason things out. Good luck out there!