Peeking down at your two starting hold’em cards and finding a big, fat, juicy pocket pair of queens, or maybe A-K staring back at you is a terrific feeling. You’re thinking, “I just can’t wait to raise.” No doubt about it, it feels terrific — unless someone else raises before it’s your turn to act.

When that happens, the wind’s taken from your sails. You’re faced with cold-calling two bets, and you’ve got to think about the cards your opponent might be holding. Maybe she’s got a pocket pair of kings or aces, and you just went from favorite to long-shot in a hurry. But maybe she raised on a whim, or with a marginal hand like Q-J. Players do that all the time, and if she has, your foot is firmly planted on her throat.

Nevertheless, a raise always puts you to the test. Do you step deftly out of the way by folding, or reraise and make it three bets? Even if you have a big hand, unless it’s a pocket pair of aces it might not be the best hand right now. On the other hand, you might be in a better situation than you think. Even if your opponent’s hand is stronger than yours, you can always get lucky on the flop. Perhaps aggressively reraising might even allow you to seize the initiative on the next betting round, especially if your opponent raised with A-K, A-Q, or A-J and missed the flop completely.

If that happened, you can bet if you think you own the best hand, or if you believe a wager might convince your opponent to fold. If you’re not sure how your hand stacks up, but your opponent checks, you can check too and take a free card.

While raising or folding is usually the preferred option, you might just want to call in situations where you have a good-but-not-great hand. With powerful hands like K-K or A-A, the decision is a no-brainer; reraising is always the best choice. But if you have a so-so hand, one that would be worth a call — but just barely — you’re usually better off folding when someone raises before it’s your turn to act. When you need to have the flop kiss you twice in order to be competitive, you are a decided long shot and just looking for trouble if you call.

If a solid player raises and you have A-T or K-J — hands that look good under most circumstances — you are better off folding because your opponent will usually have a stronger hand than yours. He probably holds a pair of tens or higher, or two high cards that include an ace. Any ace in his hand probably has a king or queen along with it. If you each have an ace but he has a better kicker, your hand is dominated. Dominated hands have only three outs, and that’s never a pretty picture. If he has a pair, you’re either a very slight underdog or a very big one if you have a mid-range pair. While two overcards are only small underdogs against a pair of eights, nines and tens, they are big dogs against J-J, Q-Q, K-K, or A-A.

Look at the situation realistically. You’re a small favorite — many players call it a coin flip — against some of your opponent’s probable hands, a big underdog against others, and dominated to the extent that you have only three outs against others. In the long run you’ll lose a lot of money on these confrontations. If you’re holding a pair of queens, kings, or aces, or A-K you can always reraise. But with a pair of jacks, you’ve got a hand that’s right on the cusp, and the flop is even money to contain at least one card higher than your pair.

In a no-limit game or in a tournament, you’re really rolling the dice by calling a big raise with a pair of jacks. If you’re short stacked and about to face elimination anyway, making a stand with a pair of jacks is probably the best thing you can do. After all, that pair of jacks figures to be the best hand you’ll see before you’re forced to go all-in.

But at that point in a tournament you have very few options. You can’t sit around and wait for a better hand and you’re not likely to be dealt a bigger hand in the near future. You can’t bluff either, because your short stack means that someone will probably call because it’s an inexpensive opportunity to eliminate an opponent. When your back is to the wall and you’re completely out of running room, you have no choice. Push all your chips into the center of the table and hope.

Hope, as you may already have surmised, is the death of many poker players, but in this case no other options are available to you.

There’s a caveat to all that’s been mentioned so far. When a late position player opens the betting for a raise, you have to think about whether that player is just trying to steal the blinds. How can you tell whether your opponent is bluffing or has or a real hand? The best way is to know how he or she plays. Some players rarely raise without at least two big cards. Others raise with any two cards from late position if the pot has not been opened by the time it’s their turn to act.

When you are facing a player who might be raising on a bluff, you can open up your playing repertoire and reraise. By making it three bets to go, you will almost certainly knock out all but the most stubborn adversaries, and any decent hand probably figures to be the best hand against one opponent. Moreover, your third bet usually allows you to seize the initiative and take control of the pot by betting the flop and the turn.

Except for running perilously close to empty in a tournament and having little or no maneuvering room, each tactic you bring into play in these situations is based on a rational plan. And any plan, no matter how dicey it may be, is better than hope. When you play poker, you may want to heed the words of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, written 700 years ago:

“All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

This article originally appeared in Woman Poker Player Magazine Print Publication.