My Call Button Is Broken (strategery post)

[fanmail]

As I have been playing mid-stakes 6-max for several months now, I have been a winning player. This is due mainly to the fact that I can outsmart the idiots at my tables and I have decent table selection. I have been really working hard on improving my hand-reading skills as well. That itself is a huge difference maker in upper mid stakes.

However, I think I have some leaks in my game that really tough players can exploit. I would like to seal them up so I can move up and continue winning. One of these holes, in my view, is that I limp too much and call raises too often with speculative hands or good hands.

So I decided to try an experiment where I would 3-table 2/4 and act like my call button was broken. Preflop my only options were to raise or fold. The same applied on the flop. After the flop, I removed the rule. I just got done playing about 600 hands. It really helped me think differently about what I was doing. I even folded a few suited connectors to an early raise with a couple calls before me when I was in position. Normally I would always call those. But I put myself to the test of whether my hand was good enough to raise with. And if it wasn't, I had to fold. I realize that sometimes calling is the best option, but I wanted to practice a different strategy. I would suggest trying this out if you haven't before. It really puts you into another frame of mind.

[DJ Sensei]

I never openlimp anymore. If my hand is worth seeing a flop, I'd just as soon build a pot and have some initiative going in.

I do call a lot in position though with speculative hands, planning to outplay my opponent or flop a big hand.

I sometimes limp behind too, but always with the intention of calling a raise if it comes.


Basically, it was probably a good experiment, but there are certainly plenty of spots where calling preflop is correct.