On the subject of “Hero Calls”
I’m working on an article called “WTF Is Poker? Thoughts on Keeping Poker Simple.” In there, I am including a section on “Hero Calls.” I wanna jot down my thoughts here and get some feedback. I’ve been experiencing making Hero Calls firsthand, so I feel qualified to give thoughts on it.
First, let’s define what makes a Hero Call. A Hero Call is when you call a decent sized river bet with a weak made hand, usually second pair on a dry board or two pair on a flush board or whatever. Of course, lol disclaimeraments, this is villain dependent and action dependent. For example, say raise 88 OTB, get called by an unknown in the SB, flop comes 732hh. Villain c/c’s flop, check check on a Q turn, river is a blank and villain suddenly bets. You Hero Call because you’re such a genius and great poker player; obviously villain is bluffing a missed draw and you won’t be pushed around! Of course he has KhQh like he always does, and you look like the fish.
Let’s look at another scenario. You have AK OOP vs a fish, you value bet 3 streets on a Kxxxx board, and Villain shows KTo. The fish called because he believed he had the best hand (he either thought there was a chance you were bluffing, or just fell in love with tawp pare). In both hands, the person on the river called with a weak hand because they thought there was a chance their hand was best, despite how the action played out.
My point is that there is really not much difference between fish getting value towned and Heros making Hero Calls. Yes sometimes they will be bluffing. Yes sometimes you have to call because the odds indicate a call being correct. Most of the time you end up value towning yourself. Don’t be the fish for the sake of boosting your poker ego the times you end up being right. Stop making hero calls. And remember an economic principle told to me by Split Suit of Stox Poker, minimizing losses is the same as maximizing gains.
December 11th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
I think “stop making her calls” is an overgeneralization. In general, I agree that making hero calls against fish is bad, b/c fish usually just bet good hands on the river, and check bad ones.
However, against thinking players, hero calls become a bigger part of the game as we can exploit over agressive opponents by making calls on 3 streets, rather than raising a moderately strong hand somewhere along the way.