Raise if you have the best hand.
One of the unavoidable side effects of playing holdem poker would be having to listen to your rivals gripe about how unlucky they had been in the last hand, the hand before that, and the hand last month 
when some <censored> had caught two successive flush cards to outdraw their set. What you wouldn’t hear would be how their end could have been avoided with one simple action: a raise on the flop!
So often it would happen that a poker player would call a bet with a quite good hand on the flop, which in turn would influence other poker players to call as well. Had he raised, the poker player holding the best hand on the flop could have tempted his rival either to fold or to make a very expensive call, both of which would be positive results for the raiser.
Make it Tough on Opponents
When you would be holding the best hand, you should play it aggressively. Tip seventeen will persuade you to bet whenever you would feel you have the best hand, and this Tip would push you to raise when the poker player to your right would have bet, if you were to feel you have the best hand. Again, you would need not be certain your hand would be good to make raising correct.
You would want to make it tough for poker players behind you to stay in the pot. Raising would serve to protect your hand: that is, it would become very expensive for opponents to remain in the hand with you, and they would be most likely to fold. This would usually increase your chances of winning the pot, and that would be a good thing.
Don’t Give Them Odds to Call
Suppose you were to have a king and queen and the flop were to come a king, a nine and a five. You would flop top pair. If the poker player to your right would bet and you would be next (with a few poker players yet to act), you would have to raise here. Yes, it would be possible you would be behind. Though, most probably you would have beaten him at this point.
The dilemma with just calling would be the poker players behind you. If you were to call, they would most likely call as well with hands like a queen and jack or an ace and nine. Raising here would correlate to the concept of pot odds. You wouldn’t want to call and give your rivals a favorable price to overcall in an endeavor to draw out on you.
Rather, you should raise and take away the value of their hands. They could choose to call anyway, but you would have done your part. They would be throwing money away if they would call – throwing it away to you. You shouldn’t give your poker adversaries the proper pot odds to draw out on you.
Build a Pot
Another motive to raise a bet to your right when you were to feel you have the best hand would be to build a bigger pot. There would be nothing wrong with getting more chips to the center when you would have the lead. Aggressive play would facilitate you to win the most with your good poker hands.
Don’t Slow Play
Some poker players would choose just to call on the flop when they were to have a big hand such as a set or a straight. They would want to wait for the ‘expensive’ rounds to bet their hand. Slow-playing* could produce trouble, however. First, doing this would intermittently cost you the pot. By just calling, you might let a rival see a cheap turn card that would create a miracle** straigh, or help him cultivate a good draw.
*Slow-play: Choosing to not bet or raise with a good hand in the hope of snaring other poker players on this or successive rounds.
**Miracle: When poker players use this word, they would normally mean the catching of a longshot, as, say, an inside straight or a third deuce when the player would be holding a pair of twos against a higher pair.
Then, when you would later decide to put some chips into the pot, you could find to your shock that you would be the one who would be trapped.
Another motive not to slow-play would be that the players in low-limit holdem poker games would usually call anyway. Why should you play misleadingly when you wouldn’t have to? Slow-playing would normally be done in an effort to gain later action on a hand you would feel you wouldn’t be able to get any action on if you were to play if aggressively right away. However, you would rarely run into this problem in the games we’re referring to, so you should go ahead and raise if someone were to bet.