Cold Calling - The Best Tool Ever...

... If you're a fish.


Okay, been thinking a lot about cold calling pre lately. Reading Baudib1's post on speculative hands kind of made me make this post too.

Most people here are trying to be TAGs and im sure none of us, apart from some of the good players in this forum are even close to being anywhere near a real TAG, that is the rest of us are just TAGfish.

Good TAG's enter the pot more often with a raise or a fold, than just cold calling someone elses raise. This gains us a very important thing called initiative, which lets us manipulate pot size, hand read better and push opponents off hands when we want to more easily because we showed the biggest balls pre-flop.

Obviously we should be cold calling some of the time but i think a lot of us probably do this too much and are spewing bb's away in the process.

I've made this thread so we can post our CCPF (cold call pre-flop) stats by position, and discuss common places where we make the mistake of cold calling where raising or folding would be a better choice.

I'll post my stats by position and hopefully some other players can add theirs and we can get some discussion on some hand histories too. I know most people are playing short handed so that's fine but any other full ring guys please post as i dont wanna be the only one!

This is all at 25nl;



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So i think the UTG+1 position is just a bit higher than MP and the HJ because of sample size, im definitely not cold calling a wider range there but still, they are all around 5 and gradually looser as we gain position. Is this too much?

Right im tired so bed now but i feel like im cold calling way too much and will look for some HH's tomorrow, of spots we should maybe just not call pre-flop at all and save those bb's.

remember FR guys, dont be lazy and post some stats too

I always thought cold calling is when some random player calls a 3bet ( a raises, b 3bets, c cold calls, a calls)?

I thought it was when the telephone company rings me at dinnertime to see if I want to upgrade my current plan

My CCPF is actually higher and I play tighter overall. 3BB/100 over this sample (all 25 and 50nl).

bgomez89 said:

I always thought cold calling is when some random player calls a 3bet ( a raises, b 3bets, c cold calls, a calls)?

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No a cold call is just when you call any raise without having and $$s already in the pot.

I try to play LAG, badly.

those button numbers blow my mind. Pretty sure my VIP from BTN was like 50%

When a random player calls a 3bet it's called a 4bet

baudib1 said:

I try to play LAG, badly.

those button numbers blow my mind. Pretty sure my VIP from BTN was like 50%

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Keep in mind both samples posted are FR. We don't get as many opportunities to open from the BTN as you 6max guys.

F4STFORW4RD said:

When a random player calls a 3bet it's called a 4bet

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No. It's called cold calling 3. A cold 4bet would be when someone with no $$s already invested raises after a 3bet. It happens very rarely and it's basically KK+ 100% of the time.

yah that's true. I probably flat too much there, though.

I'd bet there's still a profitable middle ground where you can probably flat maybe 5% more hands, maybe more since FR players tend to squeeze a hell of a lot less from the blinds (I think).

WVHillbilly said:

No. It's called cold calling 3. A cold 4bet would be when someone with no $$s already invested raises after a 3bet. It happens very rarely and it's basically KK+ 100% of the time.

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cold 4-bets are super scary fer sure.

might be why this is the sickest televised hand of all time.

Yeah that hand's sick but even that wasn't a cold 4bet because Veldhuis had posted a straddle. That Phil Ivey is pretty good at the poker though.

WVHillbilly said:

No. It's called cold calling 3. A cold 4bet would be when someone with no $$s already invested raises after a 3bet. It happens very rarely and it's basically KK+ 100% of the time.

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Hence the smiley - knew some smart bottom wouldn't be able to resist, though

If I was playing on tight tables I'd cold call almost never (sPPs and SCs IP aside). But in looser games (the ones I play in are loooooose), I like cold calling quite a lot, seeing flops and taking their money with my dominating/disguised hands. If that makes me a fish then so be it, but I'm a fish who's finally making money without worrying about getting my stats to look a certain way... and that alone has been a liberating experience for me.

Preflop is overrated, and it's where the real fish try to simplify the game by 3betting and 4betting according to some kind of hand chart. There, I finally said it

But in looser games (the ones I play in are loooooose), I like cold calling quite a lot, seeing flops and taking their money with my dominating/disguised hands.

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I hope you still 3bet the fish that never fold to 3bets though. Bloating a pot with your big hands against fish that always call 3bets is huge EV.

If that makes me a fish then so be it, but I'm a fish who's finally making money without worrying about getting my stats to look a certain way... and that alone has been a liberating experience for me.

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Yeah, I'm not caring about my stats either and indeed it was a liberating experience. Sometimes I'm playing 2 tables and I have 5/5 in one table and 25/18... and don't get me started with ATS and cbet%.

Cheers, I really enjoy that mindset.

Regarding the OP. I tend to rarely cold call nowadays and my range depends so much on the villain that I can't really say what is right or wrong or if I'm leaking or not.

I also don't like the idea that a TAG has this or that range. I think a TAG raises or opens with a range that beats the opponents range making it very dynamic. Maybe I'm not looking at it from the right perspective but that's how I see it.

With this said, cold calling is very villain oriented unlike my opening range that is only villain oriented when I'm stealing blinds. I'm not spewing but then again if I was spewing in 2NL... I should be doing something else.

RVladimiro said:

I hope you still 3bet the fish that never fold to 3bets though. Bloating a pot with your big hands against fish that always call 3bets is huge EV.

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Yes I tend to and then, against these guys, flopping TPTK type hands is usually the nuts and I'm happy to play a big pot.

Thanks for posting them stats WV, maybe cold calling isn't as big of a leak as i thought, the only reason it came to my attention is because i seen the stats from a couple of big winners at 100nl and noticed they were only cold calling like 3-4%.

Guess the best thing to do will be look over hands where i've cold called and make sure i always have a reason to do it, as when i filter hands that ive cold called with im down like $50, which isn't a lot and could be some variance there but i would of expected it to be in the green, i'll try and find some hand histories tonight.

I'll try to remember to check my BB/100 when I CC when I get home tonight.

acky100 said:

Thanks for posting them stats WV, maybe cold calling isn't as big of a leak as i thought, the only reason it came to my attention is because i seen the stats from a couple of big winners at 100nl and noticed they were only cold calling like 3-4%.

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Obviously not an expert but my assumption would be because 100nl players have less opportunity to cold call fish with KT etc.

I don't have a lot of hands in a new database but I'm gonna play a session of 1k hands-ish today and I'll go through my cold calling spots, posting any good ones or all if there's only a few.

You make a good point LC! And nice one WV thanks. Just trying to eliminate as many tagfish behaviours before i get to 50nl where i'll get punished even more!

Sorry forgot about this thread but my BB/100 is 29.33 (+$1,100 at 25 and 50nl) in hands where I CC preflop.

Wow, big difference from mine which when i last checked was costing me like -$50 over like 55k hands. Im gonna have to look over that and see how much of it has been coolers and run-bad and see where abouts im leaking because i must be somewhere. i tend to not cold call regs or nits unless im sure i can outplay them post flop for example they always c-bet and never c-bet the turn without a hand. Thanks for that.

I am down money CC aswell not much but i see i rarely cold call at all.Over a decent sample.

acky100 said:

Wow, big difference from mine which when i last checked was costing me like -$50 over like 55k hands. Im gonna have to look over that and see how much of it has been coolers and run-bad and see where abouts im leaking because i must be somewhere. i tend to not cold call regs or nits unless im sure i can outplay them post flop for example they always c-bet and never c-bet the turn without a hand. Thanks for that.

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CC the nits all day long. You know their range and since it's so strong when you outflop them they're very likely to pay you off. Don't CC the loose guys.

WVHillbilly said:

CC the nits all day long. You know their range and since it's so strong when you outflop them they're very likely to pay you off. Don't CC the loose guys.

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Wow, maybe this is where i have been going slightly wrong. Loose guys i cold call in position when i think im ahead of their range with like AT+ KQ, KJs, basically just hands that can flop decent when theyre raising really wide, but where 3betting would probably just make them call with better.

I never cold call nits and tight opens with stuff like AT, AJ when they're on a range that likely dominates them. So would you be cold calling nits a lot with stuff like suited connectors? All i cold call them with at the moment is pocket pairs to set mine with.