Midlimit floaters

[Nate tha' Great]

Schneids touched upon this point a little bit in one of the bicyclekick threads, and it's something that I've been thinking about for awhile, so I thought I'd give it its own vehicle.

One thing I've noticed when I break out of the nice, relaxing 15/30 cycle and play at 30/60 or higher is a pretty sharp increase in the number of *good* or even very good players who will cold call first in before the flop. The prototypical situation would be you raising in early position, everyone folding, and the villian flat calling from say the cutoff.

Is there any particular rhyme or reason to this strategy, as opposed to the standard alternative of 3-betting? Or are these dudes just good enough postflop players that they can get away with doing something suboptimal preflop? I'll confess that I can feel a little bit befuddled in the postflop scenarios that ensue.