"Why get into that situation if you aren't prepared for it?"

If you're value betting with top pair or two pair, one of the blinds is playing like they've made their straight draw, you don't block any of their outs, and you don't have enough equity to call. Especially since the other player made the raise, which reduces your implied equity even more.

"Poker is hard," he says. "I think he'll do fine. Probably won't win the table, but he certainly won't bust out first."

"Ha! Who else there is betting and folding every other hand?"

"Eh… her."

Sora points to another woman at Zell's table, one of the people drinking. Her stack hasn't changed much since the beginning, but she's evidently not paying full attention.

"Petra is a regular in the cardrooms around here," Maria says neutrally.

"I think she'll leave first," Sora says confidently.

"You don't say," says the other tournament player.

"Care for a little side action?"

He came here to gamble, and by Tet he's going to get what he came for.

"Ha! What are we wagering?"

Sora nudges the unattended bag of chips on the ground next to him with his boot.

"Two thousand chips says Petra – is that her name? – two thousand chips says Petra is the first to leave the table."

"Two thousand chips says it's him."

He points to the hijack.

"Split if it's neither. Deal?"

He grins. "Let's all have fun and play together."

"Ooh, exciting. Hey, Maria! Two thousand gold says someone busts out of the tournament in the next twenty minutes."

"No."

The blinds go around twice. At this point she's identified the player directly to her left as being extraordinarily tight and the aggressor she won the 500-pot from as being fairly wide, with none of the other players getting enough action for her to make a solid judgement call. Shiro folds a lot of weak hands and wins the blinds once from the big blind with a raise none of them call.

In the next hand she deals, as if to make up for the first one, she gives herself pocket nines. The wide player raises by 75 under the gun, bringing the pot to 150, and the hijack and cutoff both fold. Shiro thinks about it for a moment, then re-raises by 300 to 450. Fairly standard.

The tight player acting after her in the small blind re-raises by another 100 chips. The big blind folds, and the wide player calls.

Generally speaking, when you raise preflop you want to have a strategy that determines the approximate size of the raise. The surface-level game theory says that every subsequent raise should be larger than the one preceding, usually by a multiple of three or four in cash games. The reason is simple: once the players acting before you have started throwing money into the pot, you can realize your equity without betraying the strength of your hand simply by calling. Re-raising polarizes your range, intentionally showing confidence in your hand to force weaker opponents to fold and stronger opponents to try their luck.

There are nuanced reasons to make small re-raises, especially in tournaments, but Shiro doesn't believe that's what's going on. More probable is that the tight player just doesn't know how to play. Whatever he's trying to do, what he's really done is given Shiro a great price to buy into the flop, and while his range is ahead of hers she happens to know for a fact that her cards are good. She calls as well.

The flop comes with two threes and a seven. The first player checks.

She'll check as well. Her cards are still good here, and when the small blind raises she can check-raise for the fold equity from representing pocket sevens.

The small blind checks.

… okay, he's just about playing with his cards showing at this point. The confused amount of preflop aggression points to very strong hole cards, but checking behind on the flop points to a missed set with no hope of semi-bluffing. For overly cautious players there is exactly one hand that fits this description: ace-king.

Now, how best to exploit this knowledge…

The turn card is the six of diamonds.

The wide player checks.

Shiro is about to raise by a thousand chips when a voice in her head that sounds remarkably like Sora points out that poker continues to not be a game of pure mathematics. One thousand might be a good raise against an expert player over the computer, but these people are obviously scared of large numbers. Give them a good price to stay in, the way the small blind gave Shiro a good price with the first raise, and they'll be more likely to call.

She makes it 300 instead.