[jrz1972]

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In this case raising pretty much guarantees you 1 more BB and the possibility of more. Calling only guarantees you the current pot size with the possibility of more...against unpredictable unknowns I would have to go with the more direct approach...

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It's not really fair to single out one poster here, but this quote exemplifies the mistake I see in how many people are approaching this problem.

You are probably right that raising guarantees one extra BB at least, while calling might get you zero extra BBs. (Technically, Villain might be bet/folding, but I'll grant that's unlikely). But poker is a gambling game, and it is frequently right to give up a bird in the hand if doing so gives us a sufficiently good chance to get two in the bush.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that BB will call a single raise but will fold if it's two to him. (That should be reasonable. Like I said before, he might be bet-folding, or maybe he's a fish who will call two more cold with an overpair, but I think the typical player will call one but fold to two.) In this case, there are basically two cases in which calling costs us money:

1. Everybody folds behind us after we call. That's extremely unlikely. Most of the time, at least villain will call with his crap pair or he will have hit whatever draw he was pursuing.

2. Somebody calls who was willing to coldcall two bets if we raised but won't raise himself if we just call. Again, this seems very unlikely. If we raise, we are folding out crap pairs and getting called only by straights and flushes. But those hands would have raised if we called.

It is very unlikely that we lose any bets by just calling. I'm not going to try to assign probabilities to those events because those sorts of numbers tend to be arbitrary, but suffice it to say that it would be surprising if we lost anything by calling.

On the other hand, there are a couple situations in which calling gains relative to raising:

3. We get overcalls from two opponents holding crap pairs that would have folded to a raise. Not too likely, but possible.

4. Somebody after us raises his straight or flush, allowing us to trap BB and possibly the other opponent for extra bets. I see this as being more likley than 1, 2 or 3. In this case, we at least force BB to toss in a couple more bets and also gain another bet from the raiser (who may very well have just called our river raise but now puts in 3 bets).

Not only is scenario 4 the most likely of the meaningful, non-break-even scenarios, it's also the one that involves the biggest payoff. The more I think about, the more call-reraise seems clearly +EV relative to calling.

It is true that calling has a lower downside than raising, but it also has a larger upside and a probability distribution skewed toward that upside. It's a gamble, but it's a good one IMO.

Even if one disagrees with this analysis, you absolutely have to get away from thinking about only the worst possible scenario for various plays and what various options "guarantee" you. Playing for guarantees is very rarely good poker.