[MEbenhoe]

[ QUOTE ]
In fact, thinking about it, I think his reasons can be boiled down to two scenarios. Reasons 1 and 2 apply to good, made hands -- you want to get money in there if you likely have the best hand without much draw, and also want to force draws to make a mistake by calling.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just thought I'd address this statement. This really isn't that correct. There are very few situations in the hold em games that you will find online where a player is making a mistake by calling with a flush draw or OESD. These types of draws being the ones that most people consistently will play all the way to the river I think its important to correct a misleading statement such as this. Lets use an example to illustrate this idea:

You are holding A [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] UTG. You limp in and it is folded around to the SB who completes and the BB who checks. There are 3 SBs in the pot. The flop comes J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] T [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 2 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] The SB checks, BB bets and you raise thinking you have the best hand. At this point there are 6 SBs in the pot and it is 2 SBs to the small blind to call. Now if the small blind was on either a OESD or a flush draw what do you want them to do here? Well according to you you raised to make them make an incorrect call. That is wrong, in fact anyone who would fold in this situation is losing money. You're getting 3:1 immediately on your call and its almost guaranteed the big blind will call so basically 3.5:1. You're about 5:1 to hit your flush draw on the next card or about 6:1 to hit your OESD on the next card so you know for this to be profitable you either have to be able to make up 1.5 BB or 2.5 BB when you hit. This is incredibly easy to do in a 3way pot so calling here is profitable for the SB.

So if the Small blind folds here you've actually made money off their mistake, but you also make money when they call just not for the same reason. For this example lets say that while you have A [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], the Big blind has A [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] T [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] and the small blind has 8 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 4 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] on the J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] T [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 2 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] flop. Given this situation the hand breaks down like this:

cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
Js Ah 465 51.50 429 47.51 9 1.00 0.520
Ad Th 65 7.20 829 91.81 9 1.00 0.077
8c 4c 364 40.31 539 59.69 0 0.00 0.403

With your pot equity being so high you're gaining money on every bet that is put into the pot. However you'd actually gain more if the small blind folded because that would change the breakdown of the hand to this:

cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
Js Ah 891 90.00 83 8.38 16 1.62 0.908
Ad Th 83 8.38 891 90.00 16 1.62 0.092

In situation #1 you have 52% pot equity in what will be a 9 SB bet so 4.68 SBs, but in situation #2 you have 90.8% pot equity in what will be a 7 SB pot so 6.356 SBs. Also to show how you gain when the draw calls your raise over if you didnt raise, if you don't raise the pot and the small blind calls you still have 52% pot equity but it is now of a 6 SB pot so 3.12 SBs, so you would have lost 1.56 SBs by not raising here.

Now this situation was actually a lot smaller pot than most online pots are at this stage, so you can see that in many situations you actually want draws to make the mistake of folding, not the "mistake" of calling. However, even if they do call you are still gaining from your raise over having not raised due to the fact that you gain on all bets and raises because of your pot equity.

Hope that all made sense and wasnt too drawn out.