The orthodox answer is that if the pot odds are favorable to drawing a hoped-for "out" then it makes sense to call. If you've already got a better hand than you suspect the others are holding, and the desired "outs" will just make you that much stronger, then by all means raise. Different players use different triggers to move from a call to a raise.

Consider a common betting situation in which someone in relatively early position has raised the blind or bring-in and you are in late position with a decent hand. Do you call? Do you raise?

The orthodox answer is that if the pot odds are favorable to drawing a hoped-for "out" then it makes sense to call. If you've already got a better hand than you suspect the others are holding, and the desired "outs" will just make you that much stronger, then by all means raise. Different players use different triggers to move from a call to a raise.

Either way, there is the problem of being able to assess whether those early raisers really have the cards they are saying they have. In Stud, a door card may help sort out this issue a bit. In Hold'em, you are in the dark on the first betting round. Basically the player's bet is about all you have to go on.

It may sound simple and self-evident, but the best solution to the problem is to have a good understanding of the player before the hand commenced. It is a common failing to judge the strength of another player's hand by the criteria you yourself would employ with the hand. If you are in a mood to play a tight game, you almost automatically project tightness to the other players. And of course, that will mislead you. The value the other player puts on the cards may be vastly different from what you would do in a similar situation.

If a player is betting aggressively or playing loosely, it is indeed possible that they are overplaying their hands, compared to what you would do.

This is the danger: You might wind up folding your hand, thinking you are out-gunned, only to find out that you would have beat them had you stayed in the game.

This is a terrible frustration, but something suffered by almost everyone from time to time. Folding a winning hand because you misunderstood that the other player was overvaluing his or her hand is really much worse than being the gullible victim of a bluff. In a bluff situation, the other player is falsely representing his or her hand, and if you believe the bluff, you might fold the better cards. But in the situation just described, the aggressive player is being sincere. It's just that he or she places a higher value on the cards that you would if you held them, and that subjective difference between the two players was something you either did not perceive, or forgot about.

One of the reasons that seasoned players like to watch games in progress before deciding to join in is to "go to school" on the players. Even once they have entered a game, they still might go slow for a while, feeling their way until they have a comfortable idea of how each player at that table plays. A good part of this "comfortable idea" is to see how the player's betting behavior changes with one pair, or two, or a flush or straight draw. Another part of it is to see whether a player is noticeably more conservative in early position (as is appropriate), or whether he or she plays hands much the same way, regardless of position.

Certainly it is true that even an experienced player can almost never be really sure when an aggressive or optimistic player is over-playing the cards (as compared to the player's own standards), but in time it will be easier not to fold a good hand against an opponent just because their opinion of their own hand was higher than yours would have been had it been dealt to you.

Live Example

Many disciplined Seven-Card Stud players will not raise the bring-in bet with a hand less than Jacks or better or at least two suited over-cards. Others might be looser, and fire away with a pair of eights or nines. Assume that you are in late position with a low door card and a pocket pair of Jacks. Someone has bet strongly out of early-to-middle position, perhaps re-raising the completion of the bring-in bet. This might lead you to think that they must have at least a high pair, particularly if everyone else's door card is fairly low, too. Now they could be bluffing, but without a high door card that would be foolish. You check them out and conclude that they are probably sincere. Do you fold a pocket pair of Jacks?

A bit depends on whether this player customarily bets high pairs or low trips aggressively. Some do, and some don't. It is not only good to keep in mind how others bet high pairs, low trips and reasonable flush and straight draws, it is also appropriate to mix things up a bit yourself. Otherwise, you become the predictable one, and you may not get people to fold the better hand