Poker calling station
Poker games have many strategies of playing them and one such negative tactics is when a player always makes a call on every bet put on the table and virtually never raises. Called a calling station, such players do not exploit their strong hands and sometimes end up winning. Since in community card poker games like Texas hold ‘em, anyone can make their hands winning by using the cards from the board, calling station players have chance of making a profit even after they play negatively and with a lack of judgment. Generally rookie poker players turn out to be calling stations who have an inflated idea of their skill if they luckily manage to win with this negative strategy and in both real and online casinos, the games played with low stakes invite some such players.
Interestingly in limit poker games, if several calling stations are playing together, some decisions taken by these players become less wrong by an effect called schooling. So, although it is not the right decision to draw when having an inside straight as the chance to make the draw is low and the action of calling bet does not seem profitable enough, if several calling stations are playing, the pot size will automatically build up and suddenly the decision to draw seems not that bad.
When rebuys are allowed in poker tournament, calling stations do not hesitate to call with les than decent hands in an attempt to make a better draw than the other players and make a chip profit. In case they lose, they have the option to play again by staking their fresh buy-in. Since this builds up chip stock on the game table and there is no risk of elimination, even veteran players sometimes use this tactics.
The only counter-strategy available for players pitted against a calling station is that they must not indulge in deception play and rather play aggressively when they have strong hands and take care not to go on betting when their hands are not too good.
