There are situations when calling can be profitable....this may get a little lengthy just so you know. Times when you have a decently strong hand -- but it may be cheaper to simply call two bets (and get to showdown), than to raise the original bet and be forced to muck if more aggression is shown and not get to showdown.
Its all about keeping pots as small as you can when you arent sure if you have the best hand IMO....or at least avoiding making pots excessively large when you arent sure where your at. This is something I need to work on myself.
Example: You call a PFR short handed with Kd10d. The flop comes a rainbow K 4 Q. Both of you check the flop and a turn brings a Jack. He leads out with a 1/2 pot sized bet. Now to raise here to see where you're at , you'd need to at least triple his bet for your raise to have any effect.... lets throw numbers in.
Say, down to 4 handed in a tourny, you are playing 100/200 blinds and you have a stack of 4500, and your opponent has a similiar stack. His open is for 600, which you call from the BB putting 1300 in the pot. On the turn he bets 600....you opt to call, and then on the river he bets 1200, you call again. You used 1800 chips, and you got to showdown.
If you decide to raise the turn, you'd have to put in roughly 1800 chips --the same as the last time, but now you are faced with a reraise (in which youd probably have to muck) or the potential of him pushing hard on the river if you decide to check (or costing yourself more with a river bet)
It seems the better move would be to just call and find out where your at when the cards get flipped here... itd be cheaper, and youd get to showdown
I also dont mind calling in a circumstance like this. Say you call a PFR with 9s8s and the flop comes 10h 8d 4s. You can flat call a flop bet with mid pair, hoping to improve on the turn (2 pair, flush draw, straight draw), otherwise then raising the turn as a steal attempt... of course in short handed play, you can flat call a continuation bet bet, then steal once your opponent checks the turn as well.
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