When in a confrontation, you always have two innate options available to you, which are as old as nature itself: fight or flight. You can choose to stand your ground, or you can retreat. When it comes to No-Limit Texas Holdem, you always have three options available to you: raise, fold, or call. Raising, I would argue, is the same as the aforementioned fighting option, while folding is your chance to retreat from the hand. Calling, on the other hand, does not correlate with either of the laws of the animal kingdom. And if I had a parallel to draw from nature, it would be that of burying your head in the sand.

We all know that calling is weaker than raising, whether that be deliberate when slow-playing a monster or just because you do not have any conviction in your hand. Calling in a cash game isn't such a bad thing. You might be getting the right price to hit your draw, for example. But calling in a tournament, generally, is a bad idea for two main reasons. One is that there is more value in the chips you lose in a tournament than the ones you win. You cannot reload in a (non-rebuy) tournament, so, effectively, every hand could be your last one. So calling and missing the flop too often can cripple you. The other reason is that success in a tournament is largely down to making people fold their hand, either by getting them to fold a winning hand or not allowing them to draw out on you. Making someone fold in a tournament is less about “bluffing” and more about putting the pressure on. So whether you have total junk or suspect you have the best hand, making someone else lay down is always a good result.

If you are thinking about playing a hand, you should be thinking about raising with it. And if you are thinking about calling with a hand, you should think about folding it. Folding is never too bad an idea when you don't have the nuts, because it ensures your survival, at least until the next hand. Raising is a good idea, you might have the best hand and make a bigger pot to win or you might pick up the pot there and then. By calling, you force yourself to have the best hand.

Now that I have gotten my message across (calling is bad, by the way), lets have a look at some common situations where calling can destroy a tournament for you.

Ace-rag

I don't think I need to go into too much detail, as it has been said so many times before, but calling with an unmade Ace-X hand is dangerous. If it is an out-of-position raise you are calling, you are likely up against either a strong pair where only your ace is an out, or a better ace which will bust you if your shared card hits. The best you can hope for is a very small pair or KQ. Whatever they are holding, you are never much of a favorite to win a showdown, statistically.

Now, if you are going to play an Ace-X hand, raising with it is a better route to take. If you are dominated you will probably get reraised, making it easier to get out of the hand there and then. If you are not dominated you can potentially take the pot right then or later if they miss the flop, because the aggression you have shown thus far will be more credible after the flop. But the muck pile is never too bad a home for these hands if you are not the first person to open the betting.

Drawing to the second-best hand

Many a valuable chip is lost when the lure of a suited flop becomes too much for us, because you can’t reload and because the blinds can become very hefty. If you must speculate to accumulate, make sure you will be rewarded with an unbeatable hand. What happens when you hit your 10 to make a straight when it also provided the board with a third spade? How do you feel when your Queen-high flush gets raised and reraised?

Remember that people play a lot of Broadway hands, so the chances of your straight being the best are questionable. A suited Ace turns some players into Golem, and they will not part with it, so your flush could be second best, too. Draws are also deadly when the board is paired, because even if you are not drawing dead, anyone with a pocket pair is drawing to a full house.

In the late stages of a tournament, you should be very careful when electing to play these sorts of hands anyway, because as soon as someone hits a piece of the flop the chips will fly around everywhere. You may call only to be reraised all in, so save your chips for a made hand.

All in early - pre flop

In the late stages of a tournament, you would be delighted to see an all in bet when you are holding pocket Queens, the blinds are high, and people have to make moves with a large range of hands…most of which QQ dominate. In the early stages, where you can pick and choose hands with impunity, an all in bet preflop realistically should only be AA or KK.

Now, we all know from online poker that isn't the case. In the past, I have been amazed at how low some players standards are when calling an all in. I've seen players call a two-way all in during the first hand of the Poker Stars Sunday million with pocket threes before. I've witnessed many a KK get cracked by an all in preflop with A2.

But a few moments of absurdity should not make your calling requirements any looser in the opening stages of a tournament. Pocket Jacks can be a seductive hand preflop, as can AK. The problem with hands like these is that the hands that you dominate would never be going all in early. Pocket Jacks dominate nine other pairs preflop and most non-paired hand combinations, but when a full stack goes all in at the start of a tournament you can not realistically put them on any of those hands. At best they have AK, but most of the time you need to hit a set to win.

Big slick

AK is another tricky hand to call an all in with. It is a hand that will beat most pocket pairs half the time and beats Kings one in four times. But, essentially, calling an all in early with AK is a gamble, which you may as well put your entry fee on red in a casino with. Remember that AK isn't even a hand yet, and will almost definitely need to improve to win.

Once we are into the middle to late stages, calling a raise with AK should not be an option. Once the blinds are high, tournaments become about pairs and overcards. AK is a big hand later on in a tournament, and you need to be raising with AK or dumping it. First, AK is only evens against a pair if you get to see all five cards, and it is hard to call and continue with the hand if you miss the flop. So you maximize the chance of hitting your hand if you force the other guy into a showdown by raising all in. The other benefit to this approach is that you will often force a fold and pick up the pot right there.

Position when it doesn't matter

Position is king in cash games, and, when utilized correctly, is just as important in a tournament. There is, however, a time when position becomes less important in a tournament, and that is when the blinds are eating everyone alive.

Most good cash game players will loosen up their starting hand requirements when they can see a cheap flop on the button. But when some players have less than 20 big blinds, the advantage you have in acting last post flop is often redundant when players start going all in as soon as they see the flop, because their chip counts do not give them the flexibility to do anything else. When people start getting committed to pots and their hands before the flop, acting last after the flop is much less advantageous.

Good pot odds, bad timing

In a tournament, never forget that pot odds are about chips, not money. Making a call because it costs you 100 chips for a potential pot of 400 chips seems too good to be true, but there are other things to consider.

First of all, if you do hit the flop with a poor hand, there is a good chance you are still behind, which can cost you dearly. In the late stages of a tournament, players will be making some big moves at every pot and you don't want to find yourself stuck in-between two other players raising and reraising. The worst sort of hand to make a pot odds call with is a weak Ace, because their is such a good chance that that is not a live card in this scenario. It might cost you only 100 chips for a 400-chip pot, but by the end of the hand you may well have lost another 500 chips because your second-best hand didn't hold up.

The second thing to consider is the real money cost of calling. Let’s say you are at the final table of a tournament and the payout is escalating greatly with every place you progress. You may find yourself in a situation where it only costs you 1,000 chips to play for a pot of 9,000 in a four-way hand. Calling, from a pot odds perspective, is mathematically the correct thing to do, but when the payout is escalating so significantly and the chances are that a player will be all in before the pot finishes (as they often are at a final table), it oftentimes will be much more financially rewarding not to call. Yes, you may miss out on a big pot, but a lot of the time a player will bust, which will guarantee you a bigger payout of real money, not chips.

Calling is not a terrible thing in poker, but calling too much when you have the option to raise or fold certainly is. Remember, when you raise you not only maximize the value of hands, you also always give yourself an extra way to win the hand. And I think we have all seen enough bad beats to say getting your opponent to fold when you have a monster is never too bad. Aggression certainly wins tournaments, so whenever you are in a hand, think of things in terms of pump it or dump it. Calling should be reserved for special situations.