When you break online poker down or any type of poker for that matter then it comes down to ranges…… both yours and your opponents. If your opponent open raises from the cut-off for example then they are clearly raising with more than pocket aces. So your hand then needs to stack up to all of the hands that your opponent would commit the same action with. Let us say that you have 1000 hands of PokerTracker data on the player that raised and you know that they raise 40% of the time from that position.
Let us also say that your hand is Qc-10d……what is your play? Well using PokerStove again we can see how our Q-10 hand stacks up against our opponents range and a quick calculation reveals that it has around 45% equity against your opponents range. While it is true that you could be up against the very top of their range like with AA-QQ then that is unlikely. When you throw position into the mix and the fact that calling basically tells your opponent very little about your hand then calling is a solid play here and in no way should it be seen as passive.
Poker theory dictates that you take aggressive action if you are head of your opponents range or the range that they perceive you to have, passive action if you are comparable to their range and negative action which is folding if you are behind their range. Clearly though these concepts get a little fuzzy when we see flops, turns and rivers with various betting lines.
