Preflop Play

The decisions you make before the flop are foundational for play after the flop. Employing the wrong preflop strategy will set you up for disaster and make your life needlessly difficult. Conversely, if you apply the right strategy, then many of your post-flop decisions will be easy and automatic.

Consider the following hand. We are playing 1/2 NLHE at a casino. We are in the CO or "cut off" which means the player on the dealer button is on our immediate left and acts after us. Actually, before we go any further, let me diagram a poker table and its positions for you.

You can see on this diagram there are 9 positions. Preflop play starts with UTG and proceeds in a clockwise fashion. Hence, UTG is considered early position, whereas the BTN is considered late position. UTG+1 is also considered early position, and CO is also considered late position.

Alright, so let's say we are in the CO, and MP and MP+1 limp in. We have observed these players, and they are loose recreational players who like to limp in with a lot of hands, hoping to hit a lucky flop. We have a hand like AsKs or JsJh and we make it 5 or 6 big blinds after they limp in. This is basically an ideal money making situation in live poker.  We're in position, we have a very strong hand, and our opponents are likely to have weak hands. Even if our opponents fold we are taking down 3.5 big blinds without any rake. That's a reasonable result. If they call, we're going to be playing a pot in position against an inferior hand. A lot of the time our opponent will catch second best, and will pay us off with increasingly larger bets as we progress through the hand.

This is already a plum situation, but we can actually improve on it. Let's give our opponents a strategy. Let's make them loose and passive, so that they are willing to check and call with many different holdings, but they only bet or raise with really strong hands. Now the situation is even better, since we will be getting value out of them, and if they do happen to fluke out and make a strong hand, we don't even have to pay them off. They will be in a truly hopeless situation, and conversely, we will be printing money.

Unfortunately, life isn't always so cut and dried. While this situation does occur time and again at the poker table, poker is thankfully a lot more complex than this single scenario. And there are a lot of different ways that someone can win at poker. But this hand example of raising a strong hand in position against limpers does demonstrate some important concepts in poker. For example, that limping in with weak hands is a poor strategy, precisely because it can be punished by people raising strong hands behind you (or even just over limping with hands that are superior to your wide range). We introduce the concept of position and the concept of 'value', both of which are foundational to poker strategy.

Position

A keen understanding of positional play is important in poker. In poker the later your position the better and the earlier your position the worse. The blinds are a big of a mixed bag, because you are in late position before the flop and early position after the flop, and you have some forced bets already made, but in general you should play from the blinds as if you are in early position. That is you should be cautious about which hands you raise or call with. That is to say you should fold a lot and seldom raise from the blinds and from early position. When you do raise it is with a hands like AKs, or QsQh, a hand that is almost certainly the best hand right now, and can survive a lot of flops as well.

You need to be cautious from early position because the whole table is still to act. Anyone can still pick up a strong hand and make a move on the pot. Furthermore, anyone who calls your raise except the blinds is going to be in position on you throughout the hand. This is a disadvantage, so you want to make sure if you can't have position you at least start with the best hand. Being out of position with the worst hand is a recipe for disaster.

Pocket Pairs

Pocket pairs can be a real money maker in no limit hold'em, especially in really loose live games. This is because if you hit a set, you have a very strong hand. You should be able to get a lot of value from inferior holdings. Someone can make two pair or trips on the turn or river and you will still have them beat (if they make trips, for example if they have KQ on QT3, and the turn is a Q, and you have pocket threes, then you will still have the best hand with a full house). Sometimes even just top pair will put in a lot of money against you. If the pot is big your opponent might not want to let it go. Or their hand just might be too strong to fold, like if they have top pair or an overpaid. They might suspect you are on a semi bluff or going wild with a hand like top pair. Or even just airballing it.

Despite the potential profitability of pocket pairs, you should not just automatically call with them in all situations. You just consider both your immediate pot odds, your likelihood of facing a three bet, and how much you can win if you do make a set (your implied odds). Still, in most situations you will want to take a flop, because you don't need to win much more to make it worth while especially if the pot is multiway. 

For example, UTG (150 bb) opens to 5x bb. MP (200 bb) calls, BU (200 bb) calls, and we are in the SB in a 1/2 blind structure (that means the big blind is twice the size of the small blind). In this scenario we have a clear call. We are facing immediate pot odds of 16.5:4.5 or around 3.5:1. These are decent pot odds. To calculate our odds we simply add up each of the calls (5 + 5 + 5) as well as our  

0.5 big blind, and the big blind, then we compare that to the amount of the call, in this case 4.5 big blinds. 

So we are 7.5:1 against hitting our set. We are already getting 3.5:1 so we only need to make up another 4:1 postflop or 18 bbs. The pot is already going to be at least 21 bb, maybe more if the big blind joins. So we just need to win a single pot sized bet to justify our call. And we actually prefer having multiple opponents, because while it slightly increases the chance we lose with our set, it greatly increases our chance of getting paid off post flop. This is actually a big problem in tough games, where you are more likely to go heads up, in that even if you hit your set a lot of the time you are just taking down the pot as your opponent folds because he doesn't have a hand. Usually you will get at least one or two bets if the pot is multiway, and of course the sky is the limit on how much action you can get (or at least the table stakes). Sometimes you will stack one or more opponents with your set, as it can be hard to get away in a bloated pot.

Now if you are short stacked, say playing only 60 big blind, and let's say you are in MP + 1 and MP opens for 6 big blinds. Now you have a clear fold. You aren't getting much in the way of pot odds, and the implied odds aren't there either. So you have to look at it situationally. Also if there are very loose players in the pot that is even better, since they might pay you off with a weak one pair holding when a professional wouldn't.

Another factor is how big your pair is. The bigger the better, since with bigger pairs you can stand to win unimproved more often, and also you have less chance of set over set. Some players drop 22 and 33 completely for this reason, to reduce the risk of set over set. But 22 and 33 can still be quite profitable in the right situation, namely against bad players who go too far with their hands.

Our Overall Preflop Strategy

The first component of our preflop strategy is to fold a lot. Playing tight is enough to gain an advantage in most games. This is because most games have loose players who call too much. The perfect counter strategy to this approach is to fold a lot, and to raise strong hands, especially if you are at a table with multiple callers.

Your goal in poker is to make the best hand at the table. You specifically do not want to make the second best hand. Not only does this not win, it loses hard. Of course everyone will end up with second best hands at some point in their poker career. That's inevitable. But there are certain things you can do to prevent being second best too often. Avoid hands like K5s or K9s that are prone to being second best. Don't play hands with little hope of improving like 78o or J7s, These hands make big hands too infrequently to recoup all you will spend chasing them, and often when they do make a big hand it is not the nuts, so that will limit your potential payday with them.

The second component of our game is aggression. Tight but aggressive. When you do enter a pot you want to do so with a bet and/or a raise. In general you want to be careful about calling too frequently and adopt more of a raise or fold mindset. That being said, against aggressive opponents it can be profitable to let them take the lead, and to just call them down especially with strong hands. You might be tempted to call them down a weaker hand, and there are situations where that can be the best play, but when you can call down with a weaker hand a lot of hoping is going on. You have to hope you have the best hand, and you have to hope you don't get outdrawn. And then you have to hope that your opponent continues to bluff in spite of your calls. That is a lot that can go wrong. Whereas if you call down with a hand like a set, then you can beat bluffs, you can beat value, and you can have a strong hand regardless of what the turn and river end up being. 

A Battle For The Blinds?

Theoretically, poker is supposed to be a struggle for the blinds. Pots should be contested heads up, sometimes three way, and seldom should a hand go all the way to showdown. That is how poker should be played. That is how poker is played, at the top level, or by pseudo-GTO computer programs that employ strategies devised using advanced machine learning alogorithms.

However, the reality in a 1/2 live game is that the blinds are irrelevant. It is really a battle for the bets. For the pot. For the prospect of going three streets of value against a calling station. The blinds become irrelevant because of the mistakes that your opponents make. Once you have a couple guys limping in every hand with loose holdings, the blinds become an afterthought. Now it's a battle to take advantage of the limpers and to avoid being gored by the concentrated ranges of your tighter opponents.

In poker, a lot of the glory goes to winning the big pots. And that is natural and healthy. But it is just as important to avoid potential pitfalls, like facing a raise from a tight opener. In that situation, you probably want to fold almost all your hands and proceed with only the very top holdings. Hands like AK, or QQ, or KK, or AA. If you are facing a raiser and a reraise from two tight players, you want to play only KK and AA. Remember, you need a stronger hand to play against a raise than you do to raise yourself.

Hand Groupings

PokerRoom.com posted the following hand rankings, based on actual player data

Quite similar to Skalansky's Hand Rankings

     
    Establishing RFI standards based on position is a challenge in and of itself. 

Johnathon Little offers the following solutions : 

Developing optimal ranges against an open is a much more difficult challenge. This challenge is intensified as your opponents will open such radically different ranges. In general, you want to be very cautious about entering the pot when someone has raised. They probably have a strong hand, and you have to worry about the players who are still to act. Now if someone is routinely raising with weak hands, then it might make sense to flat call them with a hand like AsJs that is way ahead of them, especially if you are in late position. But if someone only raises with strong hands and you suspect your AsJs is dominated, then calling their raise will put you in a world of hurt.

Let's consider AsJs vs a very wide open.

A 50% range is very wide. How wide? All the hands in green. Including a hand as weak as Ts5s but not a hand like 6s5s. Against this very wide range we'd have a lucrative 26.3% edge. But it is even better than that, because we are in position. And we have all the later streets to consider. The thing about big bet poker is that what really matters is what happens on the turn and the river, as the pot gets swollen. Proper play preflop and on the flop is all about setting up situations on the turn or the river where you get a lot of money in as a big favourite. That's why we play tight pre and on the flop, waiting for good hands that connect well with the board. Then once that happens, and we're very likely to have the best hand, we pile the money in. 

Now let's consider another situation. One where we have AJs against a tight players raise.

Here the shoe is on the other foot, and we are the dominated party. Of course a three percent range is very tight. This is more usually a three betting range, although some very conservative players do open 3% ranges. Although to be fair most of them are not open folding AKo.

Anyway, the point is this: you don't want to flat call raises. If you never called a raise preflop in poker, you would probably do better than most players. Now I am not advocating a never call strategy. There are profitable preflop peels. In particular, pocket pairs in late position can be very lucrative vs a small open. Just remember, it takes a stronger hand to call a raise than it does to make the raise, and often discretion is the better part of valour. Remember our ideal situation is when we have a strong hand and are against a weak player who has limped in, telegraphing a weak hand. The last thing we want is to go against a strong player, with a strong hand. That's the opposite of what we want. If a tight player has opened with a raise, we know for a fact that if we call we will be against a tight player with a strong hand. Now, we might iso a loose limper and get called (or worse, three bet!) by a tight player who is still to act. That's unavoidable. That's a different story, there isn't really anything we can do about that. But we can at least avoid playing anything marginal when we know for a fact a tight player is in there with a strong hand.

Another commonly misplayed situation is when you have have a strong hand, like AKo, or JJ, and a tight player raises. A lot of players reraise in this situation, because they have AK or JJ and that is what they do with those hands. But you have to consider who your opponent is.

Let's say we have a loose limper in EP, and then a very tight player makes an iso raise to 5bb. We give him a 5% iso range, which is tight but relatively reasonable, especially for an EP isolation play . 99+, KQs+, AJs+, AKo

So we're competitive against this open, we probably don't want to fold with position, but we're a dog. 

Three way things actually improve. 33.33% is the break-even point three-way. We go from a slight dog, to a slight money favourite even though the nit has a plurality of equity. Furthermore, our chances of winning big turn and river bets are much higher against Mr. 5%-80% than they are against the tight guy. The tight guy just isn't going to have that many combos of hands we can potentially dominate. Sure, he has KQ, and AJ, and AQ suited. But there are only 4 combos of each of those hands in the first place. Actually three combos because of our A and K. So he has to have one of those 9 combos in total, and then we need to hit our mutual card. This is already a pretty big parlay. On the other hand a guy playing 80% of hands is going to have all the offsuit aces and all the off suit kings. With off suit hands that's 16 combos originally, 12 once you factor in our removal. He can also have hands like K9 or 98 that get coolered when they make a straight. Or we can make top pair against his mid pair and win a bet or two. There are just a lot more ways to make money with a third player in the pot. Whereas heads up against the tight player we are going to be in a zugzwang a lot of the times post flop, say if we three bet and he peels. First of all, if he peels he may very well drop some of the hands we dominate, making it even harder for us to make any money. And then he is going to play pretty well postflop, continuing with his overpairs when we miss and folding when the ace or king comes most of the time. 

Furthermore, flatting and inviting the whale or whales into the pot also substantially reduces our variance.