Explanation of Cold 4bet
Cold 4bet refers to a 4bet made on the first betting round where that 4bet is a player’s very first action in the hand. An example in Hold’em might occur when the cutoff open-raises, the button re-raises (3bets) and the small blind re-raises again (4bets). Note that the small blind has not taken any other action in the hand before making the 4bet which is why the action is described as from “cold”. If it is instead the cutoff that 4bets after open-raising this would not be described as a cold 4bet since the cutoff had already taken the action of open-raising earlier in the same hand.
Example of Cold 4bet used in a sentence -> We 3bet against the cutoff opener but faced a cold 4bet from the small blind.
How to Use Cold 4bets as Part of Your Poker Strategy
Cold 4bets represent an immense amount of strength. Many players will only ever cold 4bet with a premium starting hand such as QQ+ or AK in Hold’em. It therefore generally makes sense to give our opponents a lot of respect when they make a cold 4bet against our preflop 3bet.
However, the strength represented by a cold 4bet can potentially be used to our advantage. Since our opponents would ordinarily expect us to have a premium when making a cold 4bet we can think about using the line as a bluff when there is a 3bet before us. This is especially the case if the 3better is known to show up with a wide range of hands and is not a calling station when facing raises. Cold 4bets are typically around 2 to 2.5x the size of the 3bet in terms of sizing.
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