Raising for value: sometimes we don't want to protect!

[DMBFan23]

I think some people might be new to the concept, or they might have forgotten amidst all this talk about "protecting" your hand.

we do make money when players stay in! a lot of times, we want them to!

an example rife with hyperbole: you call preflop with 66, PFR raises, gets 3 callers, and you call. flop 622. we can bet and have PFR raise to "protect our hand" from higher pocket pairs, but why do that when we can check and let him bet when we WANT players in to have them call incorrectly and push our equity edge. a lot of times when we "protect" our monster hands and draws, we just make our opponents play correctly by folding. as the pot gets bigger we'd rather just take what's there, but I am seeing this advice being given in small pots with hands as strong as top two on a drawless board. that's not always a "protect me" hand, sometimes that's a "trap the whole field" hand.

another example of this is if we have like AA closing the action on a T53 board, and SB bets and gets one caller to you. just because raising does nothing to protect your hand, you're ok with that. raise because they are still giving you mony by calling.

the key is to find out when we want to protect and when we want players in.

the main point though, is that sometimes we want players to stay in because their pot odds are not as good as they think they are (for instance, AK might think he has ~4 outs in the 622 hand above) and we make more money by trapping people and giving them what they perceive as profitable calls than we do by "protecting" ourselves from obscure runner runners and allowing players to fold correctly.