Cold Calling

A student recently asked me about cold calling. Before I describe my answer, I should explain what I mean by student. I prefer to play than to teach, so I seldom take on poker students who pay for lessons. I do have a lot of friends who are trying to improve their poker who come to me with questions. In some ways, everyone who plays poker is a student of the game. All of us, even Phil Ivey, are still learning. We are studying our opponents, uncovering new tactics and strategies, and being introduced to new variations of the game. So really, we are all students. In this particular case, my student/friend had been in the securities industry for most of his life, including a period of time working for Stratton Oakmont, made famous by the film The Wolf of Wall Street.

He mentioned that “cold calling” was a term salesmen often use to describe the solicitation of new customers. A lead or hot prospect is someone who has expressed an interest in your product, often by responding to an ad about a stock. A cold call is someone who has no idea about the product. The salesman must start from scratch and convince them this is the stock that will make them rich, and then sell it to them. Converting a cold call into a sale is very difficult.

In poker, a cold call, is calling one or more raises when you have no money invested in the pot. If three people limp, calling the big blind, and you also limp that is just a limp. If someone behind you now raises and you call the raise, it still isn’t a cold call because you already had the amount of your first call invested in the pot. A cold call occurs when someone ahead of you raises and you call. Making cold calls in poker is similar to those made by salesmen in that they are often not successful. Making a cold call is much more dangerous and requires a better hand than limping.

I recently wrote a series of columns about odds, and thinking in terms of odds is a good way to approach cold calling. Let’s say you have a fairly weak hand, like 8-7 offsuit, on the button. One player limps and you limp, both of you have stacks of about 95 big blinds (BBs). Let’s make some simplifying assumptions. If this situation occurred 100 times, you’d get back 100 BBs once, you’d get back ten BBs ten times, and you’d lose the rest. How would you do? Since you invested one big blind 100 times, you are down 100 BBs on your initial investment. Your return from the one huge pot is 100 BBs, and your return from the ten small pots is another 100 BBs for a total return of 200 BBs. You have gotten back 200 on an investment of 100, your net win is 100. You got odds of 2 to 1.

Now, suppose you had cold called a raise to three BB in the same situation and gotten the same results. Your return would still have been 200, but in this case your investment would have three BBs per hand or 300 total. Instead of a net win of 100, now you have a net loss of 100. Instead of getting odds of 2 to 1, you are actually laying odd of 3 to 2. For every three you put into the pot, you get back two. Clearly this is a disaster. I have made a lot of simplifying assumptions here, but it does illustrate why cold calls are extremely dangerous.

In reality, the situation is even worse. When someone ahead of you raises, they generally have a better hand than when they limp. You have less of a chance to beat a better hand. In the calculations above, we didn’t discuss additional bets that you would have had to put into the pot after you initially call. In many of the hands where you flopped a straight draw, you’d have to put more money into the pot. This additional investment would lower your return. Sometimes there is another raise after your call. In the case where you limped in, the pot would have been small, and calling a pot sized raise would have only required another three BBs or so. In the case where you cold called, the pot would have been bigger. Calling a pot-sized raise here would mean you had to invest at least eight to ten BBs. (If you folded after the limp, it only cost one BB, but after the cold call, it cost three BBs.) Using our example hand of 8-7 offsuit, I’d consider limping after one or more limpers. I’d never cold call with it.

To summarize: a cold call (versus a limp) requires you to put more money into the pot with less chance of winning. It significantly reduces the odds you are getting on your money, often converting a plus equity situation into one where you rate to lose money. In the next column, I’ll continue the discussion of cold calling, along with some very specific examples. ♠

Steve ‘Zee’ Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful gamesplayer. He has been a full-time gambler for over 35 years. With two WSOP bracelets and few million in tournament cashes, he is easing into retirement. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. He can be found at some major tournaments and playing in cash games in Vegas. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A in New York City -The Library near Houston and Doc Holliday’s on 9th St. are his favorites.