You are playing in your regular Thursday-night poker game, dealer's choice, and the game is 7-card stud, high only. You have a pair of Aces showing, the second received as the fifth card. You have been making normal-size bets, and after the seventh card has been dealt, there are still three others in the hand. You find that despite a number of possibilities, your hand has not improved. You consider making a bet to suggest you have at least two pair but decide instead to check. There is $50 in the pot. Duke, sitting to your left, also checks, but Bill bets the maximum allowed, and Ty folds. Now it's up to you. You . . . Do you fold, call, or raise? That depends on several crucial pieces of information, some of which you would already have as a player, though they were not mentioned above. First, how big is the bet, and what are the betting rules? On the one hand, if Bill bet $2 because this is a $2-limit poker game, that is a small amount to spend to possibly win $52. Because a pair of Aces or worse will prove to be the winning hand in more than one twenty-sixth of all deals in 7-card stud, it would be foolish to fold in the face of what ... read full excerpt from: Thursday-Night Poker ebook
