The Double Raise: A Beginner's TellIt's very common for
lower-stakes players with a pair such as pocket aces to use a double
raise to keep their opponents in the pot. But, why would you want to
keep your opponent in the pot with only a pair, especially in
No-Limit Hold'em? A double raise is a huge mistake in No-Limit
Hold'em because you're giving the other players great implied odds
to hit their hands. For example, say a player is sitting with $600
and raises the big bet to $12 with pocket aces, the math is only
correct that you call with almost any two cards because if you hit
your hand you'll almost always double up. In this example
we'll assume that you suspect he has aces, but aren't quite sure,
and you have pocket queens. You move on to call him pre-flop and
flop a queen. He bets hard and you take his whole stack. While he's
sitting there whining to himself, you smirk at him knowing exactly
what he had the whole time. The next time you play online
poker or make a trip to the casino, keep this small tell in the back
of your head. You'll be surprised how many players love doing this -
and it's the kiss of death for new players. Not only is this
tell good pre-flop, but it's a great post flop tell as well. When
there's a straight draw out, and it looks as if an opponent has hit
it on the turn, many people will raise your bet double. This raise
is almost begging you for some type of call but you can immediately
fold knowing that you were beat when he hit his draw. You'd be
pretty surprised at how often I've seen this situation happen when
playing online. I started a log of every time a player had pocket
aces or kings when they raised double pre-flop and I found that, out
of 20 hands taken to showdown, 17 of the people who did double
raises had pocket aces or kings. It's a very logical approach
to think that raising double would net some profit but the problem
is it's not a high enough bet to weed out other players. The more
players in on a pot, the less likely your aces or kings will hold up
to win it. If you want to take down a pot, you have to get out of
the habit of raising double and vary your bet sizes to keep people
in when you want them to play and scare them away when you don't. | 
