Call

A call is answering a bet with the same amount. You neither raise nor fold, you pay to stay. A call always has a price, counted in one line: what you have to add, divided by what the pot will hold after your call. A half-pot bet costs 25%: the call pays if you win more than one time in four.

Two numbers are compared: the price of the call and the share your hand has against his range. Share above price is a call; below it, a fold. There is nothing else in the decision, and yet calls are the most expensive line of loss in poker, because the price gets counted and the share gets felt.

An example from session 15

Three tens on a board where any ace-queen is a straight. The opponent raises to $36.61; I need to add $24.61 into a $56.09 pot: the call breaks even at 30%. Besides the chance he is bluffing, I have ten cards out of forty-six for a full house. I call. On the river he bets another $40, the call breaks even at 33%, and a straight is half to three quarters of his bets. I call again. He has A♦Q♣, minus $80. Both prices were counted correctly, and both were paid.

The same in business

A call is accepting someone else's terms in order to stay in the game. Renewing a contract on bad terms, paying a contractor extra, one more round at the investor's valuation. Every such call has a price and a share, and the decision is right only when both have been counted. Paying «so as not to drop out» is paying a share you never counted.

The whole hand is in session 15: “The arithmetic of a planned loss”.

The other terms are in the glossary.