[Snoogins47]

[ QUOTE ]
Again, this is talking about games with halfway decent players. The reason you raise these drawing hands is because your opponents are aware of pot odds but don't apply them correctly; in other words, they know an 8-bet pot is different from a 4-bet pot, but they play the 8-bet pot as though it were a 14-bet pot, so you get way more action than you deserve when you do hit your set or two pair or whatever. In games where the players are awful this raise is pointless unless you have an equity edge and HPFAP does say as much.

[/ QUOTE ]

In fact I want to go even farther, though I can't quite decide if I'm correct or not here... if you didn't have an equity edge (we have to assume we're PRECISELY breakeven, and that the players will play PRECISELY the same regardless of your raise/the pot size), wouldn't it actually be a MISTAKE to make this raise, since anybody who's not drawing dead after the flop will be making somewhat less of a mistake by trying to run you down?

Anyway, although it's already been touched on, people seem to always have some major misconceptions about when to bet. I swear it's that damned Sklansky on Razz hand example. People read that and think "Well, he'll call anyway on his draw, so I'm not going to raise yet," which is, at best, a painfully incorrect application of the concept. Here's the simplest way I can put it:

Even if your opponents will not be making a mistake by calling, betting/raising is your most profitable option if you have an equity edge.

This is obvious in NL situations (Say you have AA on a Js 6c 2c 7x flop. Your opponent is like me when I'm drunk, and he flips the Tc 5c face up. The pot is $5k, and you somehow have $1k left in your stack. He checks to you. He's a moron if he folds here getting 6:1 if you push, but could you ever imagine checking here without causing thousands of poker players the world over to spontaneously feel like they just got kicked in the naughty bits?

This post probably sounds pissed off, but trust me when I say that it's directed to nobody in particular. If this post causes ONE less "Well, don't worry about not betting the turn, he would've called and hit his 2 outer anyway" post on the internet, then I feel I've just done a major service to the poker world.