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Take quizYou have no doubt been in those situations where you simply can’t get away from your hand but end up losing a ton of chips if you play poker often enough. Poker pros usually call such a scenario a cooler.
In the simplest of terms, a cooler in poker is a hand where both players have very strong holdings, so all chips will inevitably end up in the middle, and there is not much that could be done to avoid it. This means that you will end up losing, even though you have a very strong hand.
Some coolers can be escaped, while others are inevitable and lead to the loss of all chips in your stack and either a rebuy or the long walk back home.
In this article, we are going to discuss what coolers are, when and how you can avoid them, why they do or don’t matter, and how they differ from bad beats.
What exactly is a cooler in poker? Different people may give you a different answer to this question, but there are some situations that certainly qualify.
One common poker cooler scenario that happens a lot in tournaments is running pocket Kings into pocket Aces with under 100 big blinds in your stack.
In a situation like this, there is nearly no getting away, as pocket Kings rate to be the best hand nearly every time when facing preflop aggression.
When stacks are deeper, such as in cash games, flopping a weaker set against a stronger set is considered a cooler, as this is another situation where you can’t really fold your hand even if you feel like you could be beaten.
Similarly, making a King-high flush against an Ace-high flush with both hole cards can be a very tricky spot to get away from, and most players would consider this situation a cooler.
Another example of a cooler would be flopping a straight against a higher straight of your opponents.
These are just a couple of examples, but it should make it clear that if you have a cooler, you will be on the losing end of the variance and will lose a lot of chips just because of an unfavorable situation.
Looking at the game of poker from a theoretical perspective, most cooler situations don’t really matter, and you should never fold your cards when you get into them.
For instance, playing a 35 big blind stack, you should never consider folding a pair of Kings, regardless of your opponent’s reputation or physical tells.
The hand is simply too strong, and folding against a weaker hand would be a disaster. Instead, you should stack off and hope for the best. If you do end up running into a better hand, that’s fine, as you will also get paid off by KK when you get AA in another scenario.
From a long-term perspective, coolers in Texas Hold’em are somewhat rare and always even out, so you should not be too worried about them.
However, many poker players tend to believe that it is coolers preventing them from winning at poker and leading to their ultimate demise.
What’s even more, many players allow a single cooler to tilt them so badly that they play subsequent games or hands much worse than they could, leading to losses that could have been avoided.
Avoiding tilt after facing a cooler spot can be difficult but is necesarry if you want to be a successful poker player in the long run.
Whether you are a recreational poker player who plays for fun or a hardcore professional like Phil Ivey, you will run into coolers at the poker tables. Since there is hardly any chance of avoiding a cooler, the question is what to do when it happens and how to proceed after one.
Poker coolers can be somewhat traumatic, especially if they happen deep in a tournament or when you are playing a very deep stack in a cash game.
When such coolers occur, going on tilt is very common, and losing lots more in the minutes to come with substandard poker hands can happen.
Since no one is truly immune to tilt, the real thing to do after facing a cooler is to take a break if possible or to try and put things into perspective.
In cash games, you can always walk away from the table even if you have more chips, and you should absolutely take some time to clear your head if the hand affects how you feel.
In tournaments, you may be left with a short stack after a cooler, which means taking a break could be too costly.
Still, you should never look to put your stack in with any two cards after a cooler, but rather try and continue playing a sound poker strategy.
The biggest problem with coolers in poker is that they lead to tilt, and going into your sessions prepared to take some coolers and dish some out should be your strategy.
If you think about poker as a long-term game, you should be aware that over your life, you will get into spots where you have AA vs KK and those where you have KK vs AA about the same number of times.
Likewise, you will run your middle set into the top set and have the top set against the middle set plenty of times, with all the chips going into the middle every time.
Over a small sample of hands, such coolers can go one way or the other, but if you keep playing such things will even out.
However, if you allow coolers to affect your play and lead you to lose more than you should, these are chips you will never truly recover.
The best you can do is play your best game in the future, but the hands you misplayed will cost you chips you didn’t need to lose.
So, try to make sure you are always playing a strategically sound game of poker and that your chips never go to waste with hands that don’t require you to put them in.
Two terms that often get misused in poker are cooler and bad beat, as players often use one to describe the other.
Speaking precisely, a bad beat is a poker hand in which you get all the chips in as a big favorite but end up losing the pot, as opposed to a cooler in which you are a big underdog but simply can’t fold your hand because of its relevance strength.
An example of a bad beat would be getting all your chips in with the top set against the middle set and the one card on the river giving your opponent Quads. Even milder and more common situations, such as a straight or flush draw hitting the river, can sometimes be described as bad beats, depending on who you ask.
However, a cooler and a bad beat are two distinctly different poker terms, and understanding the difference will ensure you don’t embarrass yourself when talking to more experienced poker players.
Steffen Sontheimer explains it in this video:
Many new poker players see the dreadful coolers that happen in high-stakes games and wonder if there was something that could have been done to avoid the cooler.
The truth is that, in most cases, trying to avoid a cooler will end up costing you the expected value, as you will lose out on getting the most out of weaker poker hands.
For example, imagine holding Ks9s on a board of QsTs4s 5d 7c and facing a river bet from your opponent with about a pot-sized bet left behind in your stack.
In a spot like this, you could just call with your second nuts and thus avoid losing all your chips if your opponent has the nut flush.
But this completely disregards the times your opponent will have all other flushes or hands like sets and two pairs that he might look you up with if you go all-in.
Playing timidly in scenarios that have a chance of being coolers is usually not the right play, and there are very few exceptions.
One of the biggest exceptions comes in live poker games when playing against the biggest of nits, who are very likely to have the nuts when playing aggressively. In such scenarios, finding a hero fold once in a while or just calling instead of shoving on rivers like the one in the example above could be reasonable.
At the end of the day, trying too hard to avoid coolers is not the right poker strategy, and you should not be thinking in terms of avoiding such spots.
If you want to understand poker coolers better, a recently played hand from the PokerStars show Big Game on Tour should give you a good idea of what a cooler in poker can be. This hand could have been a bad beat story had the money gone in earlier, but since both players waited for the river to put their money in, it turned into a cooler.
The hand was played between two Hollywood stars in the poker world, Jennifer Tilly and Arden Cho, both of whom were involved in the high-stakes poker game.
Cho opened the pot to $600 while holding the two red fives, Griffin Benger 3-bet to $2,200 with KcQh, Tilly called with 6c6d, and Arden came along for the ride.
The flop brought Ks6h5s, which was an ultimate cooler scenario, as it gave all three players theoretically strong hands, with Tilly holding the best of it.
It checked over the Benger who c-bet, Tilly called, and Cho came over the top, making it $9,400 in total. Tilly made it $30k, and Cho called the raise, believing she had the best hand.
The turn brought the 9c, which led to both players checking, as the most obvious straight draw had just gotten there.
The river brought the ultimate cooler card, as the last remaining 5 in the deck was dealt out. Needless to say, all the money went in, and Cho won a $400,000 pot in one of the biggest televised coolers in the history of the game.
Should Tilly have folded the river? Absolutely not, as the only reasonable combination of cards that beat her was extremely unlikely.
While Tilly definitely suffered a huge loss on this hand, it also demonstrates the fact that coolers can happen to anyone at any time and aren’t something to be too worried about.
Poker coolers are an inevitable part of the game, and while we may not like being on the losing end of them, being the winner sure feels pretty good.
The truth is that coolers come both ways every now and then, and there is really not much you can do to prevent them or avoid them.
Instead, the best you can do is keep your cool when facing a cooler in poker and make sure that you are not put on tilt by every cooler you are dealt.
If you need it, take some time away from the table to reflect and make sure that the hand really was a cooler and not your mistake. Once you know that, you can go back to playing the game without any concerns.
What’s even more, make sure that you have the proper bankroll to play in the games you are playing and that a single cooler can’t cost you a significant portion of that bankroll.
If this is the case, you will be able to move on after a cooler and keep playing poker as if nothing happened until the cooler reverses and you win your chips back in a similar spot.
Now that you've learned what cooler is, it's time to assess your overall poker prowess. Take the Pokercode Poker Skill Quiz 2024 to evaluate your knowledge and receive free access to coaching videos and additional resources.
Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, this quiz will help you identify areas for improvement and take your game to the next level.
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