Thank you! It's amazing how you're still around after all these years.
What's up with the cold calling? Why would professional poker players advocate cold calling so much? It doesn't make much sense to me. I get how every now and then the meta changes, but isn't cold calling too much bad?
I mean, I am still quite new to serious poker... but as I understand it, cold calling has the following flaws:
- You have no initiative.
- You can easily get raised unless you get to close the action.
- You have literally no fold equity. P(villain=fold) = 0. Always.
So how can it be beneficial? Especially pre-flop? Whenever I try to do it when I want to setmine with a pocket pair cheaply, it tends to backfire. So I just end up raising my pocket pairs instead. I believe it was Figaroo2 who explained this perfectly in another thread (why it makes setmining more profitable).
Well, really good players (and I mean world class players when I say good) can get away w/ cold calling because they understand the situation perfectly, and can bluff in the correct spots consistently, and they know how to extract thin value in the right spots. Most players can do this sometimes, but not EVERY time.
So what tends to happen is X top world class player advocates Y strategy. In the case of cold calling in the BB, it's justified as I'm getting 2.5:1 or whatever on a call, and my hand has better
equity than that, so I call.
Well, in no-limit poker, there's much more to consider than your immediate pot
odds. You're not playing limit poker. Not to mention, those odds only count at showdown. Your real
pot odds to the flop are much worse than that AND your positional disadvantage also reduces you realized equity.
Now for X pro, this is a legit strategy, and more than likely he's fitting it into a bigger overall game strategy. But taken out of context w/ just this situation to consider, it's not really a +EV play imho.
But this is currently all the rage right now. That's why you're going to see more and more people doing this, and that's why I like to talk about it in here so you guys will understand how to counter this strategy. I'll throw out a couple of things for example.
If you're seeing your opponent cold calling (and they are a normal reg in your game) w/ hands like K3s, Q7s etc... in the BB to your opens, then the adjustment is simple.
1) You pound them on the flop and turn. You increase your flop c-bet sizing and turn sizing to make them pay for their weak holdings. They'll flop a lot of 3x and 7x in the above example, and they'll have a lot of tough turn decisions. Also when you both make top pair, yours will be better most of the time and they will pay off lighter in these spots.
What I started doing is just doing my normal c-betting sizing from the first 2 opening positions (even when they CC from the BB), and a much larger sizing from CO/BTN. This isn't static, but the point is, we both have weaker ranges, who will flinch first. I have position, you're going to have to make bigger tough decision w/o knowing what I'm going to do on the turn and river.
2) You increase your pre-flop size, and make them fold more or have to play bigger pots OOP vs. you.
Just simple adjustments you need to make when you notice what your opponents CC range is in the BB. This also generally reduces 3-bets as well (from most regs, not all). You'll lose more when you fold of course, but that will balance out if you're not being 3-bet as much.
