Search for the hero inside yourself! Because in poker, as in life, being a hero and making a successful call will give you one of the best feelings in the game.
Remember the first bluff you pulled off and the buzz it gave you? Making a ‘hero call’ gives you a similar feeling.
What is a hero call? It’s when you make a call holding a poor hand, because you’ve correctly decided that you opponent’s cards are even worse!
A hero call isn’t calling with top pair, bottom kicker in a big pot. That’s the heroic equivalent of saving a cat from a tree. No, I’m talking about…
Calling someone down with third pair when the board is full of straights and flushes
Calling with Ace-high when someone’s raised you all-in on the river.

Hero calls aren’t strictly necessary

Now, having got you all excited about making hero calls let’s be clear about something – you can get away without ever making one and still be a winning poker player at most levels. It’s certainly not a move you should be pulling too often.
However, in the right spots these calls can be profitable, and if you aspire to playing at higher levels it’s a skill that should be part of your arsenal.
Hero calls, like any heroic acts, shouldn’t be done to show off, they should be done because it is the right thing to do.
Occasionally you’ll get a gut feeling that your King-high is ahead but it’s tough to advise on that. More interesting are the opportunities where you work through a hand and decide you’re getting the right odds to call with a very mediocre hand. It’s important, too, not to view marginal calls as difficult or ‘heroic’ even, but to have worked through everything that has happened and to decide if making a call is profitable or not.

Example

Like everything in poker, it’s best to keep emotion – in this case the poor quality of your hand – out of your decision making. Let’s look at an example of a thin call on the river.
In a cash game hand I played recently the table was deep-stacked and everyone limped round to the player in the big blind who made a big raise. The other players folded but I decided to call from the small blind with 6♦ 4♦ hoping to hit a big flop.
It came Q♣ 10♥ 2♦ so at that point I was done with the hand.
However, the pre-flop raiser decided to check. This meant one of two things: either he’d flopped a monster and was trying to get action or missed with something like A♠ K♠ or a random hand he was trying to pick up the pot with pre-flop. The turn brought a 7♦ and again we both checked.
The river was a 6♠ finally giving me a pair but the fourth pair on board, which I checked. At this point my opponent came to life and bet just under the pot. This was confusing, as he could just turn over his hand for free.
If he did have a big hand it didn’t make much sense to let me go all through the hand without trying to get more chips out of me.
The only possibilities that made sense were that he’d played a monster strangely or that he’d missed and was trying to pick up the pot.
I was getting 2/1 from the pot so I only needed a 33% chance that he was trying to steal. I called and won the hand after he showed A♠ K♥.
This example will give you some idea of the thought processes you should be making. It’s a standard hand-reading exercise that involves putting your opponent on a range of hands, understanding what percentage of the time you’re ahead and whether it’s enough to call based on the pot odds.

All or nothing

A lot of the time you can make thin calls when it’s very difficult for your opponent to bet on the river.
For instance, let’s say you have position on your opponent with a mediocre hand. He’s bet out on the flop and the turn and you’ve called him twice. Now a scary card arrives on the river – an ace or a flush card, for example, and he still bets.
This creates an interesting paradox because you’ve shown resistance throughout the hand representing that you have something, and now a card has arrived that should be worrying to him if he has anything but the strongest of holdings, and he still wants to put money in the pot.
Now you have to think through the possibilities; it could be that he has a huge hand and is simply trying to get value from you, but it’s also possible that he’s trying to buy the pot or keep it to a manageable size with a blocker bet. Very often in these ‘he’s got everything or nothing’ spots the pot odds dictate that calling will make you money in the long run.
As with all poker concepts you must adjust the theory to the player. These calls are harder to make against a player who doesn’t think and simply bets their hand regardless of your resistance and/or the board texture. On the other hand poor players are usually bad at extracting maximum value from their hands, so if they’re betting when scare cards arrive you can often eliminate marginal holdings from their range.

Weak lead

Thin calls are often attempts to pick off bluffs so work on becoming more aware of when your opponents are more likely to be making a move.
To give you a simplistic example, let’s say you’ve had the lead throughout the hand, betting the flop and turn, and your opponent has been calling you down. If you now check the river he may see this as an opportunity to pick up the pot – and rightfully so.
This is especially true if you suspect that he’s missed a draw and he knows the only way he can win is by making you fold. Remember, a decent player will know he can check down and find out if his mediocre hand is good so analyse his reason for betting – do you think that he’s trying to steal the pot and your average hand is a mile in front? If so, you can call and pick off his bluff.
This is what you need to be aware of when you look weak in a hand. Let’s say you’re out of position and have decided to try and control the size of the pot by check-calling on a couple of streets. You have to be aware that you look weak to your opponent, especially if he’s aggressive.
If you take this kind of line your hand values for calling down should be lower than normal, as the strength of your holding is often very underrepresented in the eye of your opponent. Be prepared to call a lot more on the river, even if a scare card comes.
Now before you go and put all this advice into practice, there’s one final point to be made. Don’t hit the tables and become an unbluffable calling station. There’s a fine line between making a good but thin call and paying off like a slot machine. The key is to analyse every situation, be aware of the pot odds on your call, and make good poker decisions. Now go be a hero!

• Is your opponent capable of making bluffs and aggressive moves?
• Do you think that you look weak in your opponent’s eyes?
• Is your opponent betting when he should be checking because of your actions or a scare card?
• Is the pot offering the right odds to call given the chance of your hand being good?
• If all of the above are true, reach for the hero inside yourself – and make the call!