My first lesson from Small Stakes Holdem - Cold Calling

[Delphin]

I started playing poker online about a year ago and read lots of books before starting. I read ToP and HEFAP and started playing $.50/$1 limit games online and $5 SNGs. I lost a lot. I then read WLLHE and started doing a little bit better.

Enter 2+2.com I started reading posts here around Xmas and seriously studing my game. When I read Gary Carson's Complete Book of Holdem (got it for xmas), things started to click. I finally understood bet odds vs pot odds. The posts here helped me out a lot too. I bought poker tracker and started logging all of my hands online instead of putting my session wins and losses into an excel spreadsheet (which I would conveniently forget to do when I had a really bad session). I was shocked to learn that I was a 40 VPIP LAG. I downloaded the hand charts from SSHE from here and have managed to get my VPIP down to the low 20s now and it has helped immensely.

But I had a epiphany while reading the preflop section of SSHE last night. It may very well help my win rate more than any of the adjustments I have made so far. Page 60 has a section entitled "Avoiding Costly Errors". The errors are 1-Playing weak hands out of position and 2-Coldcalling raises with mediocre hands. I already knew that I need to pay more attention to position, but I hadn't thought a lot about playing in raised pots. I had read in every holdem book that you need to be tighter when there is a raise in front, but I still would cold call with any hand I'd raise and several I'd limp with. After all isn't it always correct to call just one more bet with any hand it was okay to limp with? If that's true, why not just cold call a raise with those hands? Looking back, it seems obvious how very wrong that thinking was, but it made sense at the time.

So how big an error could this be in my game? Ed Miller says that situations that don't come up very often aren't major leaks. Cold calling isn't something I do very often, so it couldn't really be a major leak, or could it?

I only have 2400 hands in my poker tracker database, so take my statistics with a grain of salt, but I believe that this is a huge leak in my game. I have cold called 39 times in my 2400 hands. Judging from the preflop section in SSHE, only 5 of those cold calls was correct. The other 34 are hands I should have folded. In those 34 hands, I had many hands where I just check/folded the flop and only lost $1 by calling when I shouldn't have, but in a few I lost as much as $5.50, some of the times I flopped well or hit my draw and I made up to $13.75 with a full house in one hand. Overall though I ended up with a net loss of $31.63 for those 34 hands.

My BB/100 for my 2400 hands is $1.13. If I had folded those 34 hands that I never should have cold called preflop, I would have averaged $2.45. [img]/images/graemlins/ooo.gif[/img]

By the way, my 5 correct cold calling hands (I know, sample size) were winners on average.

I still have lots to learn, but this was one lesson that I hope will be a huge step for me. I'll see you at my 10k hand checkup and let you know how I'm doing.

Thanks to everyone here for sharing and helping me improve.

[SomethingClever]

[ QUOTE ]
I have cold called 39 times in my 2400 hands

[/ QUOTE ]

I doubt I cold called 39 times in the last 75,000 hands.

Yeah, it's a leak... good job spotting it.

[ArturiusX]

I've done it 25 times in 12000 hands. And some of those are very iffy.

[bd8802]

[ QUOTE ]
So how big an error could this be in my game? Ed Miller says that situations that don't come up very often aren't major leaks. Cold calling isn't something I do very often, so it couldn't really be a major leak, or could it?

[/ QUOTE ]

Think of it this way. You more than likely have cold called raises 2-3 times more than you got AA dealt to you in those 2500 hands.

I think it is a pretty big leak. Easy one to fix too. Good job in catching it.

/bd

[moot]

Wait, what? Am I missing the sarcasm in this thread or something? 25 times in 12000 hands? Was that a serious statement, and if so what stakes?

I play .5/1 and am a decent winning player, I've read SSHE at least three times, and I realize the danger of cold calling...

But I find oppurtunities to cold call reasonably often. Any pocket pair when at least 2 others have cold called, or there are a few limpers (basically, if I know the pot's going to be at least 5 handed, maybe 4 at the minimum). Same thing goes for anytime I have big suited broadway cards. I jump at the chance to cold-call with QJ suited if I can see that it's going to be at least 5-6 handed or so.

Granted these situations don't arise a ton, but 3-tabling I find myself cold-calling a least a couple times an hour. Am I missing something?

[Russ McGinley]

Can someone quickly point out where I can find the coldcalling PF stat in PT?

[yellowjack]

Only situations I know of are with KQs/AJs and there are already cold-callers between you and raiser, or you can anticipate callers behind you.

The one other situation I can think of is with a PP in an aggressive game where there are already 4+ players in the pot.

Edit: Congrats to Delphin, it's great to hear these success stories.

[jaxUp]

94 times in 11k hands at pp .5/1. First off, I haven't filtered out 2+2 tables, so maybe cut that down to 75 or so. I don't think this is excessive for this limit if you have decent table selection. As I scroll through the list I see a lot of Axs, mid SC, and low pp. In a 5 or 6 (or more) to the flop type game, these coldcalls can be quite profitable.

1/2. Different story. It's a way tighter game, and your number of CC's should drop a LOT, unless you are the table-selection champion of the universe.

[mmbt0ne]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">En réponse à:</font><hr />
Can someone quickly point out where I can find the coldcalling PF stat in PT?

[/ QUOTE ]

Look at the front page for your stats in PT, under 'Known Starting Hands' look at the CCPF (cold called pre-flop) column. The number at the bottom is the total times you've done it.

Since Sunday I've played 4145 hands, and have cold-called 4 times. Once with AKo, once with KQs, once with QJs, and once with T9s. All of the suited holdings were family pots, and with AKo, I cold-called the 3bet on the button to see who would cap.

[Brain]

In the middle of the 2nd table of the General tab, it's the CCPF column. Click on the CCPF header to sort.