Should You Stop Cold Calls In The Money Game?

Some poker players think you only have to be 3-bet or fold and never call a cold versus a single preflope increase. Other poker players think Cold-Calling is worthy of your strategy. Who is right?

What is Cold-Colding?
Cold-calling is an act of calling one or more salary increases by players who have not put money in a pan on the road today. Cold-calling is the most common preflope, when a player raises and calls another player. You can make cold call versus 3-betting preflop and in the postflop multi -way pots too, but we will focus on the most common cold call types in this article.

Today we will make a cold call in the money game. We will start with the pros and cons so you can understand the basics of the game, then we will discuss some situations that almost certainly guarantee cold calls. Note for tournament players: this debate is not for you. Cold-Calling is a game that is undoubtedly in many tournament situations because the presence of ants drastically increases the chance of caller pots.

• You can see cheap clips with your moderate strength.
• When no one else is calling, you can play in the postflop position (except when you are in a small blind).
• You can draw weak players behind you to lose back calls with optimal hands.

• You can squeeze from the pan if the player behind wakes up with a 3-bet.
• The remaining players to act can call with high equity hands that will fold if you bet 3.Po
• t will sometimes go multiway, which significantly reduces your equity in the pot.
• You can’t win a preflop pot – you have to press something after post or pulling snapping.

Weak players are the most important sources of good poker players. Naturally you have to play hands with players like that as often as possible. When you make a cold call, a weak player behind will often see the opportunity to make a cheap investment to win the growing pot. The player is right, of course, but he might not be right when it comes to hand elections. Most likely he will decide to call with all kinds of garbage hands that will almost certainly be lost in a multi-route pot in the long run.

Let’s take an example:

You are on the button with T  9  Play a $ 1 / $ 2 cash game ($ 200 in). Ordinary players in the middle position rose to $ 6. Sitting to your left straight (in small blind) is a weak player and splashy that has played more than 50% of the hand handled. Under normal conditions, this hand is close to 3-bet and cold-calling (Educa-P0ker recommends 3-betting on his way). Considering a weak player in a small blind, however, you have a mandatory cold call because you will invite a weaker player into a pan with a lot of weak hands, including the hand that he won’t continue to have 3 bets. The second situation that guarantees cold calls is …

If you play directly, you know that it is more common to see a larger size of preflop collection (4BB +). When the size increases, you must be less likely to call cold and more likely to be 3-bet or fold. However, since direct poker players are usually 3-bets rarely, you are far more likely to face 3 betting squeeze from the players behind. Both of these factors roughly even come out and allow you to keep having a cold call range (except a very large size or aggressive player behind). With all that, there is one great adjustment that you need to do for your direct cool call range:

Because the MultiWay Pot with 4+ players is very common in a direct match, you have to adjust your cold call range to enter more hands that make a very strong straight / flushes. Adjusting your reach this way allows you to avoid potential cooler when, say, 7  5  You walk to Q  4  on J  8  2 . You better play hands like K  9  and A  3  So you’re on the side of the cooling winner.

So, who is right? Does call cold, the game you have to avoid or not?

The unsatisfactory answer is that no one really knows for sure, from the perspective of the “game theory” at least. Monkersolver Solver has shown that the player in a small blind, on the button, and in Cutoff made a cold call when the size of the increase was small, while the previous position was almost never done. Breakers are far from being enhanced, so we cannot ensure even remembering the monkery solution. In practice, the cold call range must definitely have a place in your strategy when the players behind weak and / or impossible for 3-bets. That’s all for this article! As usual, if you have questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to use the comments section below!