How To Hero-Call Like A King

If you’ve never thought about why you hero-call in the spots that you do, it might be helpful to spend a few moments reflecting on it now. In the moment there can be a lot of factors at play. For example, am I tilting? Am I being intuitive? Is my mind picking up on something outside my conscious awareness?

Those are some big questions to deal with while your timebank is counting down and your odds of winning the tournament hinge on a correct call. That’s why there needs to be a plan—a way to differentiate between hero-call opportunities and help us pick the highest probability ones. So, let’s explore how to do exactly that.

Let There Be Range

In poker, a simplified definition of “range” is all the hands you play in that way—so when a tight player raises from under the gun, AA, KK, and AK are in their range, while 72s and A3o are most likely not.

When you’re facing a situation at the table in which a hero-call feels like it could be right but you’re just not quite sure, ask yourself where your own hand’s strength is in the range of all hands you could end up with in that spot. Are you holding one of the worst hands you could have—bottom pair with no kicker in a spot where you could also have some middle pairs or even a weak top pair?

If the answer is yes, all you have to do to increase the expected value of your hero-calls as a whole is immediately fold your hand.

Hero-calling Rule: Do not hero-call the bottom of your range.

You’ll naturally call some of the top of your range, for example the pair of black aces on a four-to-a-flush board full of low red cards. So if you also make a habit of calling many of your worst hands, you’ll be hero calling far too often, or in poker terms, being a “station.”

A good hero-call lives in the sweet spot of the middle part of your range. Once you recognize you’re in the optimal part of the hero-calling range, which will, with some practice, only take a second, comes the second consideration.

Let There Be Intuition

I won’t profess to be able to teach you how to be more intuitive, as it’s clearly a very personalized thing, but one strategy that seems to work for me is to quickly scan my mind and body for negative emotions whenever I’m considering heroing someone. Am I angry? Am I bored? Annoyed? Eager for revenge? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, I once again force myself to click the fold button, because I know I’ll find better spots and thereby have higher success rates when the answer is no.

Only once I know both my mind and my hand range are exactly where they need to be, do I take a deep breath and release control over to my intuition, or gut feel, watching in interest as my clicking finger makes the final call.

So, the next time you’re on the fence about making a hero call, pause, note where you are in your range, assess your state of mind, and finally, let your instincts guide you. If you do that, you are likely to get the satisfaction of setting both your chip stack and your opponents’ eyebrows moving higher.

Good luck!