Cold Calling

[SixForty]

One more thing to think of about cold-calling.

If someone raises preflop, it usually denotes a good hand (let's ignore blind steals and maniacs here for a moment) Let's say that the player to your right raises first in. Now you know that he will only raise the top 20 preflop hands. (ignore for a moment which hands those might be) So he's got one of the top 20 hands here.

What hands do you want to be playing against his range?

Well, you don't want to be playing hand #20, since 19 of his possible 20 hands are better. He's ahead of you 95% of the time. You probably don't want to play hand #15 either, since he's still a huge favourite. So let's say a sound strategy is to only play hands #10 and higher. This means that in the worst case scenario, you are at least 50/50 as to who's got the better hand. Add in the extra money from the blinds, and that's an acceptable strategy.

Now, since this strategy leads you into playing the top 10 hands only, you are all of a sudden playing nothing but really, really good hands. So it's only natural to reraise him instead of cold-calling. You're reraise will force others to either fold hands that may have outdrawn you, or call a huge amount with a hand that is a significant underdog to your top 10 hand. Add in the fact that you have position and gain the advantage of momentum with a reraise, and it only makes sense.

Personally, the only times I'm cold-calling are with speculative hands that will be getting proper implied odds due to a multi-way pot. For example, two players limp, someone raises, and I'm on the Button with 44 - I'm in. Someone raises and 2 people cold-call and I'm in the CO with JTs - I'm in. Someone raises and 5 people cold-call, and I'm on the Button with 65s - I'm in. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] (YMMV)