Blue-
I think this question is so complicated that MOST answers you get will be incomplete. Tekari nails the situation in his post.
I say you pick up a book on the game to get an expert's thoughts on the topic.
The answer to almost everything in poker is "it depends."
Here is a real life example from two days ago, I was sitting at a limit game and a guy sits down with 2000 - 3000 in chips
(normally 500 would be considered more than enough to play this game). The guys at my end of the table look at each other and snicker.
I'm in the big blind with A8 offsuit. He raises from middle position and I call him. In some situations I would FOLD there knowing that AT BEST I have three outs (putting my opponent on JJ-AA, AQ, or AK). I called his raise knowing after watching this guy play a few hands that he will bet, raise, reraise and cap with ANYTHING. The bottom line is that I took the pot when the guy ended up showing J9 offsuit with a board of 235A8 with no flush possibilites and he reraised a check raise on the turn AND bet the river. The situation doesn't really differ much in no limit.
That would have never happened if I was:
a) in a different position (between the blinds and his bet or after his raise).
b) in the same position with a different opponent (much tighter).
c) in a no limit game and he raised me my entire stack which was SUBSTANTIALLY larger than the pot.
Of course there are situations (for me) where position, cards, and reads do not matter. For one, I will ALWAYS fold a 72 offsuit in late position regardless of the situation. With that said, in a no limit heads-up game I'm willing to bet that there are much better players than I who would RAISE in that scenario.
Other than getting nearly worthless information like the 72 example above, you will have to toss out scenarios to get useful responses.
You mentioned watching the TV broadcasts. For most of us reading the Rx poker forum, we are not nearly good enough to take very much information from those broadcasts and use it in our own games.
