Occasionally, when you have the second-best hand you may raise to drive the best hand out. This is a first-round raise. An ace that is forced high will not infrequently drop. If no more than two hands with small cards showing have stayed in against the ace, your raise on such a combination as K-Q may drive the ace out and leave you with a better chance to make a higher pair than the other players.

In all these cases a primary object is to vary your tactics. There are two basic ways to keep the opponents guessing in poker. One is to play different kinds of hands in the same way; the other is to play the same kind of hand in different ways. If you are going to play only good hands in stud poker, then you have to play them in different ways so that you cannot be too easily figured.

There is one general exception to the principle of early raising. If the game is wide open-where the other players bet and raise very freely-there is seldom an occasion for you to raise early. On every round someone else is pretty sure to bet. The pot will be built up without your help. You might just as well wait until the end and make pretty sure you are going to win before you start putting unnecessary chips into the pot.

The play of an open pair. When you have the only open pair, every other player in the game is at a great disadvantage. You may have a cinch high at the moment, and if so it is pretty sure to stand up. Therefore, the policy of most stud players is always to bet the maximum on an open pair and make the opponents pay through the nose if they want to try to draw out on it.