Exploiting a Calling Station

Calling stations give some players a lot of trouble, but players who know how to handle them are able to consistently find an edge. The goal of any poker player should be to maximize wins and minimize losses, and calling stations help to make this goal that much easier to reach. A calling station is someone who simply despises the fold button.

There are varying degrees of looseness that will be found in calling stations, but they are all prone to giving their money away much more freely than they should. The best type of calling station to face is of course someone who never ever folds.

An inexperienced poker player might say that you can never win if you are facing a calling station who never folds, but this could not be further from the truth. It is certainly true that you will win less pots against a calling station who never folds, this is a given, but they will give you plenty of opportunities to win a ton when you have a strong hand. Would you rather lose a bunch of small pots and take down a few huge pots, or battle for every single small pot?

Generally you will want to go after the small pots, but calling stations will allow you to focus on the sizable pots exclusively. This doesn’t mean that you should be folding when you have mediocre hands, quite the opposite in fact. When you do have decent hands there will be an increased likelihood that you are ahead if you are facing a calling station. A loose player is more likely to play weaker hands, and when you are battling against weaker hands it means that your hands won’t need to be as strong. Adjusting to each individual calling station’s tendencies will be the only challenge when exploiting them. Calling stations do not all play according to the same ranges, so if you play them like they are you will have a difficult time capitalizing on their weaknesses.

Identifying a Calling Station

Identifying a calling station is generally pretty easy to do, but this is the only first step. After you notice that a player likes to call down lightly you will need to determine how you are going to make the most from them. If one player will call down to the river with bottom pair you will want to bet with a very wide range of hands. If a calling station only calls down to the river with middle pair, however, there are fewer hands that will be worth betting.

This is a fundamental example of how to exploit a calling station as it can become much more complex than this. For example, if you pin a calling station as extremely loose you will be playing against their range very differently than a calling station is moderately loose. These ranges will also help to define just how much value can be squeezed out of a player. Where an over bet might work against the loosest calling stations, more moderate value bets might be ideal against calling stations who are a bit tighter. Adjustments are vital to any player’s success, and when you adjust to a calling station it will be easier to position yourself for profits.

SUMMARY: Exploiting Calling Stations

Calling station’s are the easiest type of poker player to profit from, but you can’t play every calling station in the same way. Extremely loose calling stations will call for a different game plan than a calling station who does make the occasional fold. Related Articles – Pre Flop Raising Cash Games – Bum Hunting – VP$IP – Reading the Board