When nobody has entered the pot, you have only two choices, raise or fold (why you shouldn’t limp in), and which starting hands to play covered which hands are good enough to raise. This post is the next spot: someone has already raised before it gets to you.
Six-handed table. UTG raises to 2.5 big blinds and it is your turn in middle position, holding A-J offsuit. Behind you, four players have yet to act: the cutoff, the button, the small blind and the big blind.
You have the same three buttons: fold, call, re-raise. A lot of players press call, and the reasons all sound sensible: A-J is a good hand, too good to fold; a re-raise might get raised back; calling lets you see the flop and play on if you hit an ace or a jack.
Someone has raised, you have not put any chips in this round, and you call: that is called a cold call. What a cold call is has the definition and the numbers. This post is only about what it looks like at the table: you call while sitting between the raiser and the players who have yet to act, and the most common endings are losing those 2.5 big blinds, or losing more.
1. Players behind you have yet to act
After you call, the pot holds the two blinds’ 1.5 big blinds, the raiser’s 2.5 and your 2.5: 6.5 big blinds in all.
What the four players behind you see is this: one player raised, one player only called. The player who called usually does not have the strongest hands, since those would mostly have re-raised. That makes this the best spot at the table to re-raise, and spot 6 in the complete guide to preflop play gives it its name, the squeeze: a big re-raise from behind, and the two players in front will both struggle to hold on.
When it comes back to you, you may be facing more than one player. The player who re-raised from behind has already said they are strong; if the original raiser also called that re-raise (a 3-bet), their hand is not weak either. And you are holding A-J offsuit, a hand stuck in between. Call, and you are playing a bigger pot between two players; fold, and the 2.5 big blinds you just put in stay on the table. Usually you can only fold.
Look at it the other way: if you re-raise yourself, the players behind you face a pot that has already been raised twice, and they need stronger hands to come in.
2. You are down to one way to win, and the raiser's hand is better than yours
A call never wins you the pot before the flop. Re-raise and the raiser may simply fold, and the pot is yours; call, and the hand has only one way left to win: beating someone after the flop.
And the player you have to beat is the tightest at the table. UTG acts first with five players still behind, so theirs is the narrowest opening range at the table (the post on UTG explains why). In RushCraft’s default ranges, the smallest offsuit ace UTG opens is A-J.
In other words, if they hold an ace with an offsuit second card, it can only be A-J, A-Q or A-K: at best a tie, and otherwise your second card is the smaller one. In simulation, A-J wins less than three times in ten against A-Q or A-K. It is the same from other seats: the opening range of the player in front of you is usually narrower than yours, and when you call with a hand that is only just good enough to open, they are usually ahead.
The most expensive case is not missing the flop, it is hitting an ace. You have a pair of aces and find it hard to let go; they have a pair of aces too, with a bigger second card. Which starting hands to play covered this problem with weak aces, and here it is worse: the raiser already told you before the flop that their hand is among the best at the table.
Missing is hard to play too. The player who raised before the flop can keep betting on it, even if they missed as well; you only called before the flop, and when you miss you can usually only fold. Miss and you fold; hit and you are often not the best hand. Those are the two outcomes “call, see the flop, and play on if it hits” actually runs into.
3. After the flop, you are stuck in the middle
Say nobody re-raises behind you, the button calls, and both blinds fold. After the flop, the order of action is UTG, you, the button.
UTG bets first and you have to decide whether to call while the button has yet to act. Call, and the button can raise, and you get squeezed again, this time with more chips in the pot. Fold, and the 2.5 big blinds you put in before the flop stay on the table all the same.
Against UTG alone, you act after them on the flop, and that is the one benefit of calling in the middle. But it only holds if all four players behind you fold, and that is not up to you: if the cutoff or the button calls, they act after you after the flop.
With more players in, a hand like A-J loses still more value. Spot 6 in the complete guide to preflop play is exactly this: the more players, the faster big offsuit hands lose value, and when you make a pair you cannot tell whether someone else’s second card beats yours.
4. Instead: re-raise, or fold
When someone has raised and there are still players to act behind you, you have two default choices: re-raise, or fold. One question decides it: is this hand strong enough to be worth a re-raise? If not, it should usually be folded.
That A-J offsuit from the start is a fold in RushCraft’s default ranges, in middle position against a UTG open; K-Q offsuit too. The hands to re-raise are the strongest ones, QQ and up and A-K suited. As for size, a re-raise is about 3 times the open in position and about 4 times out of position (the complete guide to preflop play).
Folding A-J feels like a waste, because it “is a good hand”. But the same A-J is a raise from middle position when nobody has entered the pot, and a fold once someone has raised from UTG. The cards have not changed; what changed is what the player in front of you told you. A fold costs no more chips; a call is paying to play a pot you will usually lose.
5. Three seats to look at separately
You are on the button. Only the two blinds are left behind you, and after the flop you act last whoever comes in: those two things greatly reduce the problems in sections 1 and 3. So in RushCraft’s default ranges, the button is the seat that calls the most against an open; facing a UTG open, for example, 66 and K-J suited are both calls. The hands that suit a call are easy to read when they hit and easy to drop when they miss, like small pairs and big suited cards; what a cold call is lists five conditions for when to call.
You are in the big blind. The big blind already has one big blind in and nobody is left behind, so calling a raise is only making up the difference, not a cold call. Which hands to defend is a different chart, in section 3 of the preflop range charts and in the post on the big blind.
You are in the small blind. It looks much like the big blind, but it is the opposite: the big blind has yet to act behind you, and after the flop you always act first. The small blind has all three problems of calling in the middle. The answer in the post on the small blind is: most of the time, either re-raise or fold.
Calling in the middle looks like the safest choice: no folding a good hand, no risking a re-raise. In practice it leaves you with three problems: the players behind you can still re-raise; you have only one way to win, against a stronger hand; and after the flop you are stuck between two players. When someone has raised and there are still players to act behind you, you have two options: re-raise, or fold.
To find out how often you call like this, import your hands into RushCraft and it works out how often you call when facing a raise. Going back through those hands one at a time is more useful than looking at the percentage.
If the rules still have gaps, or you want to know what to read next, go back to what Texas Hold’em is; it ends with a map that puts every guide on this site in order.