1. Have Jim the jackal beaten and force Dumbo to fold his Q-J (even though it has you beat with a pair of queens, Dumbo will be afraid you have a king in your hand). This is an example of winning a pot through aggressive play. The beautiful thing about this scenario is that you were really just making a raise to gain information about the strength of your hand, but as a by-product you forced the best hand to fold!

2. Have Jim the jackal beaten and force Dumbo to fold his A-10, a hand he might have played for $5 trying to hit an inside straight, and lo and behold, the play saves you a fortune when your third jack comes off on the next card, because it would have given Dumbo an ace-high straight (10-J-Q-K-A)!

3. Find out that Dumbo has you beaten when he reraises the pot behind you, making it $15 to go. Now you can call $5 more on the outside chance that a jack will hit the board or that Dumbo is sitting on a big draw like

and will check it on the next two streets if he misses his hand. But if he bets again or if Jim calls the $15 total on the flop, you will have to fold. At least you will know that you are beaten at this point in the hand, and you can avoid calling the next two $10 bets.
4. Find out that you are beaten because all three of your opponents called your $10 bet on the flop, and it’s just too unreasonable to think that your pair of jacks is the best hand after they all call a bet and a raise. (All three would have to be on either a smaller pair than jacks, or a straight draw, or the flush draw, and this is pretty unlikely.) betting site

5. Eliminate all the other opponents in the hand, but find that Jim does have you beat. In this case, you will probably wind up losing some extra bets to Jim because he’s a jackal! This is an example of what I mentioned earlier—of how jackals don’t lose as much as their wild play would seem to indicate, because they get paid off big-time when they actually do make a strong hand. But you will have ample opportunity to get those bets back from Jim later on, in another hand!

You can now see why raising Jim’s bet here on the flop may win the pot for you, or at least give you the additional information that says your hand is beaten. Of your three options, raising is best, folding is second best, and calling is the worst! Your raise on the flop will set up the way you play your hand on the next two rounds of betting, and it may bluff out a better hand.

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