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Almost every decent LHE poker strategy guide in the history of pokerhas preached to never cold call a raise first in preflop. And ingeneral, its a sound guideline to follow. Well, the thing is, most goodplayers do not understand how or why it is oftentimes acceptable tocold call first in.

In one situation, lets say the open raiser is a passive-aggressive, butvery solid playing opponent. That is, he tends to aggressively playhands until he meets resistance, then he clams up and plays passivelyand lets his hand reading dictate whether to put in a lot of betspostflop. Also, lets say he tends to open raise with a lot of handswhen he is in the hijack position or later.

Against this guy, it becomes correct to occasionally cold call first inwith a super strong hand such as AA or KK, or even hands like AK orAQ and other traditional three betting to get it HU hands. The reasonbehind this is simple: hes going to keep betting postflop until you tellhim to stop (ie you raise him), and even then, he may put in extrabets postflop because hes mis-reading your hand (and if we cold callwith a big ace then we are doing so with the intent of always showingit down, hit or miss).

Say he opens in the CO and you cold call on the button with KK. Flopcomes J74r. He bets his AJ. You raise. Well, hes decent, so, hesthinking about your hands, and decides to 3-bet because he thinks youhave something like a KJs, QJs, JTs, or other hands like 88 or 66, oreven total fluff. Now you can call and raise him again on the turn orriver, and hes probably going to suspiciously payoff to confirm hesbeat! This line yields you 4.5BBs postflop (or the other ideal: he callsthe flop raise, and checkraises the turn, which allows you to 3-betyielding 5BBs postflop if he calls down, which he probably will). If you3-bet preflop, youre likely to get 3.5-4BBs postflop, so even thoughyou gave up 1SB preflop by not 3-betting, on-the-average against hisstrong hands, you gain it back and then some.

Now, after this hand, hes noticed youre willing to hide in the woods when youre strong. This guy though, remains aggressive PF when hecan open raise, and since you are on his left, that means hes been

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shutting you out of playing in a lot of pots Now though, since hesseen you cold call him strong, you can start to cold call him light too,and therefore preserve your buttons dignity by preventing him fromalways stealing it. Now, you can cold call if you elect to with hands like98s, T9s, 55, or KJo.

You may ask, and are correct to do so: but what about that H.I.P. stuff (H.I.P = high card, initiative, position the 3-fundamentals to shorthanded LHE play)? It seems like youre contradicting yourself Ithought we wanted to take the initiative whenever possible? Thedifference between the traditional H.I.P. guidelines and this is that ouropponent to our right is both aggressive, and plays very well. By 3-betting him were gaining initiative, but basically losing our positionaladvantage because as it goes in most high stakes games, it getschecked to the guy with the momentum. So basically, its implied heschecking any flop and were betting any flop, so, we no longer reallyhave any sort of positional advantage and he is in essence last to act even though he is to our right. This might be ok, but by 3-bettingwere making the pot bigger and hes more likely to check and call orcheck and raise because he doesnt want to give up a pot that isgrowing in size, and when that happens things get exceptionallydifficult on the turn when were faced with a 4-5BB pot with 9-highnothing against someone who is stubborn and doesnt like to fold.

By cold calling instead of 3 betting, we reduce our own investment inthe pot (1BB vs 1.5BB PF) which helps keep the pot smaller in turngiving our opponent more incentive to give it up postflop, and we keepourselves as the true last-to-act person, while totally confusing ouropponents and making our hand less readable. Plus, it is more likely tomake the pot three-way when a blind comes along too, which furtherhelps us outplay our tough opponent on the right (protected pots canoften times make it EASIER to bluff at a pot, since it looks like youcant be bluffing into two people) and can help set us up to winning

some big pots vs dominated hands that the blind choose to defendwith. And perhaps the most important point of all with a thirdopponent in the pot, its tougher for our open raiser to continuation betturns and rivers into two opponents without actually having a legithand, so, it makes his hand substantially easier for us to read.

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As a general rule, when we are on the button with a playable hand in ashort handed game, wed appreciate as many people being in the potas possible (because our positional advantage is THAT important in 4-6handed games though that does not mean open limping from thebutton), while if we are in early position we would prefer there being

as few others in the pot with us as possible (preferably HU vs a blind).

The final important point worth emphasis is to examine who the blindsare. If they are bad players, you want to be playing hands with them.If youre 3-betting always, it detracts from that goal. So anotherreason for sometimes cold calling is to allow the blinds a cheaper priceinto the pot.

In summary: cold calling can be an effective tool against people whoplay well but otherwise go to showdown too often and are toostubborn and peel too often with overcards, because it allows you toplay a lot more hands in position and truly retain a positionaladvantage. You are aiming to feel comfortable with playing T9s andbeing able to get him to pay off with A7 (or even ace high trying tosnap off semi-bluffs) on a T74Q2 board. That is the goal. You want tohandcuff him at any time. You also dont mind a blind entering the pot(especially important if either or both of the blinds are mediocre or badplayers. If they are both good or very good players, its always betterto three bet preflop to try to keep them out). You want to use the 3 rd player as an ally to force more honest play from the guy on our rightwho has the initiative. Cold calling should be yet another weapon inour repertoire to stymie opponents and cause them to fear us andmisplay their hands.

In part 2 Ill give an in-depth hand example of floating, a conceptrelated to cold calling which usually involves trying to take away thepot postflop via understanding board textures and your opponentshand ranges and what they might think your hand ranges are.