Preflop Play: Take off the training wheels

Atlas_IRL

This is a post targetted to the posters who have been around for at least a few months. If you are brand new to poker, ignore this for now (but bookmark it and come back in two months).

How many of you still ask preflop questions like,

"How many limpers do I need to play..."
"Do I have the odds to call with..."

etc.

How many of you give preflop advice like,

"Without at least three limpers you have to muck..."
"You are getting 7-to-1 so you should..."

If you still think this way about preflop play, it's time to take the training wheels off!

Preflop play is NOT about "pot odds." It is not about how many limpers you have. Preflop play is about getting to see flops against players who will give you their money by playing poorly.

The goal of preflop play is to maximize your time spent playing after the flop against weak players and weak hands and minimize it against strong players and strong hands.

You make money in poker from your play after the flop. You've already noticed how poorly many of these players play after the flop. They put in tons of bets as huge underdogs. They don't put in enough bets as the favorite. They hemorrhage money after the flop.

When bad players limp in front of you, you should want to play with them. Say you have a hand like K4s, and two bad players limp in. You should WANT to play. Your hand has no advantage over theirs at this point. But after the flop, you will make good decisions, and they will make terrible ones. Your hand isn't good, but it is good enough.

Now you may decide not to play K4s even though you WANT to play. You might not play because you are in middle position, and the chance someone will pick up a big hand behind you is too high. You might not play because there are strong players behind you who can really interfere with your goal of playing against weak players and weak hands. But you should WANT to play. If you are on the button, then you SHOULD play because there's no one behind you to screw with your plans.

When it is raised in front of you (by a normal raiser) you should want to fold K4s. You are playing against a strong hand, and you want to minimize your exposure against strong hands.

If two strong, tricky players enter the pot in front of you, you DON'T WANT to play K4s. You want to minimize your exposure against good players.

You can play quite loose if you are sure you will only be playing against bad players and bad hands. Your superior skills after the flop can turn very marginal hands into solid winners.

-Ed Miller

bubbleking

forcing the issue by getting yourself into pots with sh!te especially against donks is gonna cost you money.

these idiots dont fold hands so there goes your bluffing equity.

basically by playing like this i.e any 2 cards your playing like a donk nd lowering yourself to their level which is not what you want to do.

JustMac

Right or wrong I gotta say that I agree with the OP. I keep my head just above water in the lower stakes. This morning I played a $24 MTT. There were about 3 occasions where I limped in LP with marginal hands/poor preflop hands purely because 2 of the weaker players at the table had limped. On more than 1 occasion I had seen both get their stacks in with tp poor kicker or draws where they were way outpriced. I felt that it was +ev to be involved in pots with them. The implied odds were very high if I was to hit with my marginal hand. (I went out to one of the 2 weaker players when he hit a flush draw after I got it all in while ahead and the other went on to win the MTT!)

fuzzbox

bubbleking wrote:

forcing the issue by getting yourself into pots with sh!te especially against donks is gonna cost you money.

these idiots dont fold hands so there goes your bluffing equity.

basically by playing like this i.e any 2 cards your playing like a donk nd lowering yourself to their level which is not what you want to do.

This is not true.

Just because your bluffing equity disappears, does not mean that you cannot beat these guys. In fact, its a whole lot easier to beat these guys.

When I have position on a moron or two, then I try to take as many flops as I can with them. Any connectors and any two big or connected suited cards and any Axs or Kxs (maybe even Qxs) are definitely hands I want to play. But do a whole lot less raising preflop. Now its about hitting the flop good and punishing the muppet by firing hard.

I dont bluff very often (almost never) against these types.

Imposter

Where is this advice taken from? Ed Millar is mostly a limit player is he not? This advice works in limit but could be very costly at NL imo.

Hitman Actual

Imposter wrote:

Where is this advice taken from? Ed Millar is mostly a limit player is he not? This advice works in limit but could be very costly at NL imo.

It sounds like limit advice, but Millar did have some input in Sklanskys NLHETP book.

I think Fuzzbox has it about right; you have to loosen up in these games. In saying that, I've been over-doing the preflop raise thing, and I'm definately leaking money because of it. Another reason not to tighten up too much is that it's very hard to get paid off well. As bad and all as the players are (I'm talking about the live games I'm playing here), they can still see when you only move with the nuts.

Atlas_IRL

taken from here

poker.wikia.com/wiki/M...mitLibrary

i dont think it says if it nlh or lh but judging from the response on 2 + 2 it seems to be limit

i wanted to see what peoples responses were like to it here were cause ive seen it so many times in the Fitz/Merrion where people get stacked when they were ahead preflop but play the hand badly then berate their opponent for playing trash

JustMac

Imposter wrote:

Where is this advice taken from? Ed Millar is mostly a limit player is he not? This advice works in limit but could be very costly at NL imo.

Could someone explain this to me? I would have thought it applies more to NL. Also I presume it would apply to tournament as well as cash poker?

Imposter

JustMac wrote:

Could someone explain this to me? I would have thought it applies more to NL. Also I presume it would apply to tournament as well as cash poker?

People who limp in are more or less saying "my hand is ok but not great let's see if I hit the flop". Calling this in position allows you to push them off the hands they don't hit and occasionally take down the pot when you both hit oe they bluff when you hit. The problem is when you half hit your hand. In NL if a K hits it's going to cost you a lot more than in limit if your opponent also has a K as you are almost definitely beat.

breadmonkey

Imposter wrote:

People who limp in are more or less saying "my hand is ok but not great let's see if I hit the flop". Calling this in position allows you to push them off the hands they don't hit and occasionally take down the pot when you both hit oe they bluff when you hit. The problem is when you half hit your hand. In NL if a K hits it's going to cost you a lot more than in limit if your opponent also has a K as you are almost definitely beat.

Yeah but surely you're not planning on going broke if the flop comes K high.

Imposter

breadmonkey wrote:

Yeah but surely you're not planning on going broke if the flop comes K high.

So what are you planning to do when the flop comes K high and your opponent bets?
Flop comes with a 4 and your opponent bets?
What do you do if opponent checks flop, you bet and he calls/raises?

You can't fold on a K high flop to a bet every time. The other ones you should probably fold but if your opponent shows any strength you could be quite often folding the best hand.

Ste05

Imposter wrote:

So what are you planning to do when the flop comes K high and your opponent bets?
Flop comes with a 4 and your opponent bets?
What do you do if opponent checks flop, you bet and he calls/raises?

You can't fold on a K high flop to a bet every time. The other ones you should probably fold but if your opponent shows any strength you could be quite often folding the best hand.

This is what it's all about, you have to play the player and use their tendancies and weaknesses and exploit them by making better decisions than they do. If you make better decisions than them, then you will make money. With all these examples it's a serious case of It Depends.

It's all about avoiding situations with good players, and playing as many flops as possible against the fish. Pre-Flop play is about as basic as it gets in NLHE, and basically anyone with half a brain can get to grips with it, but where most people are exploited is on the Flop, Turn and River, notice this is also when each decision gets MUCH more expensive.

Imposter

Ste05 wrote:

This is what it's all about, you have to play the player and use their tendancies and weaknesses and exploit them by making better decisions than they do. If you make better decisions than them, then you will make money. With all these examples it's a serious case of It Depends.

Sure it depends but I can't see how you are going to profit if you are going to fold your hand pretty much any time your opponent shows any strength even if you have hit something. Your opponent would want to be pretty bad if you can make money from hands like this.

breadmonkey

Imposter wrote:

So what are you planning to do when the flop comes K high and your opponent bets?
Flop comes with a 4 and your opponent bets?
What do you do if opponent checks flop, you bet and he calls/raises?

You can't fold on a K high flop to a bet every time. The other ones you should probably fold but if your opponent shows any strength you could be quite often folding the best hand.

Obviously, but if you're sitting there with TPNK and the pot is getting huge then you're usually in big trouble.

TacT

you need to play an excellent post flop game in order for this to be profitable. You will need the discipline to be folding to those K hi flops just to pick a quick example. Likewise with Ace rag suited, you need to be really careful and anyone who does not have excellent reading skills will more often than not get themselves into an awful lot of trouble by limping with marginal hands and letting others in with any two. let's say you limp that K4s and the board comes K84 and you are checked to then called by a complete idiot. He can easily be playing K8 and it's going to cost you money in the long run unless you are very smart about your post flop play. I don't like the advice but I know you should want to take flops for cheap against bad players, so long as you know how hard you need to hit it, in order to get paid and are not going to turn yourself into a fish and payoff better hands than yours.

Imposter

breadmonkey wrote:

Obviously, but if you're sitting there with TPNK and the pot is getting huge then you're usually in big trouble.

If the pot is getting huge there's a good chance you've been contributing to it on the flop. Yes you can fold the turn or river but winning back those BB's you lose betting/calling on the flop is not going to be easy with K4s, thus making it a losing hand.

In limit poker you can get to the river quite cheaply (if you are unsure enough about your opponent) by which time you may have caught something improving your hand or even end up splittling the pot or you could have picked off a bluff or someone with second pair. In NL you are folding to any proper bets from people with these hands much to often for the hands to be profitable.

Ste05

Imposter wrote:

Sure it depends but I can't see how you are going to profit if you are going to fold your hand pretty much any time your opponent shows any strength even if you have hit something. Your opponent would want to be pretty bad if you can make money from hands like this.

Well as the whole point of this is, the player is that bad, that's why we're trying to play pots with him. Let's take an example, just say you're playing a fish who you know never bets much when he has a hand, doesn't protect from flush draws, but pays off on the end even if an obvious flush has completed.

In that situation, would you limp with K4s, knowing if you get a flush draw, you'll (a) be offered lovely odds to chase your flush and (b) get paid off royally if you hit it. Are you bothered about folding your pair of K's now for 1 BB??

What if you know that this small bet either means a monster (as above) or a marginal hand (2nd pair), and it's further defined on the turn. Say he continues betting with his monsters (as above) or check/folds if he has nothing/ fails to improve his marginal flop holding. Do you really need a great starting hand to play against this guy, do you know roughly where you stand now with your K rag??

There's degrees of this obviously but the whole point is you know his tendancies and weaknesses, and so you just exploit them, this is impossible to do if you fold Pre-Flop. 1 BB is nothing really, when the players are deep.

robinlacey

the beautiful thing about this sort of advice in nl is that,while it is true,at least to a certain extent,the vast majority of players
a- vastly overrate this advice in their own heads
and
b- think they are much better at judging the situations where it arises than they actually are...


also,i'm fairly sure that advice was written for limit players,where for example if you flop top pair with your K4s you can call them down if you're in position...

in nl the kinds of hands worth playing for cheap in position against fish are stuff like 86s,much more so than K4s
also,in nl,especially the higher you go, a lot of the time you are not trying to get in for cheap by limping along on the button,you are raising on the button to isolate against the limper who is bad enough to limp call out of position,and also to avoid playing the hand against the rest of the table,who will often be decent enough...

Imposter

If that's the case you can play any 2 and position isn't all that important either. But I think a bad player is rarely as bad as you are describing.

robinlacey

not sure if you're responding to my post or not,but if you are:
not any two no,just a very wide range...
and position is very,very important

Ste05

robinlacey wrote:

also,i'm fairly sure that advice was written for limit players,where for example if you flop top pair with your K4s you can call them down if you're in position...

I'd say it was too, but there are still parts in it that can be taken and used for NL, it's just a shame K4s was the example chosen, because it only has flush possibilities. But it's quite easy not to get attached to TP, no kicker when you have position. In some ways Kxs is quite a nice hand for 1 BB, as it only has 1 possibility. If people intend making moves on the fish, then their cards aren't really that relevant.

robinlacey wrote:

in nl the kinds of hands worth playing for cheap in position against fish are stuff like 86s,much more so than K4s

I agree, I'd also prefer to have 86s than K4s, because of the more valuable hidden straight possibilities, but it still doesn't make the stronger flush possibilities any less valuable.

robinlacey wrote:

also,in nl,especially the higher you go, a lot of the time you are not trying to get in for cheap by limping along on the button,you are raising on the button to isolate against the limper who is bad enough to limp call out of position,and also to avoid playing the hand against the rest of the table,who will often be decent enough...

Obviously I agree with this too, Obviously you can fold your K4s or raise with it, but there's nothing that wrong with taking a 1 BB gamble every now and again against a donkey with huge Post flop holes in their game, in the hopes of stacking him off. Just don't go to the felt if a K or a 4 flops, I'd have thought that was fairly obvious.

Your last point has already been covered, all the good players are out of the hand already so it doesn't matter about the rest of the field, they'll obviously know you won't play a hand the same way against them that you will against the table Fish. If not, then they aren't that good.

Ste05

Imposter wrote:

If that's the case you can play any 2 and position isn't all that important either. But I think a bad player is rarely as bad as you are describing.

Not sure if this was at me or Robin... I thought it was me at first.

In case it's me, Position is important: Pre-flop so you know what players are going to be in the hand; and Post-Flop so you can see what the fish does first. If you're OOP to the fish, will you often be limping with K4s or similar crap, in fact will you ever be limping OOP???

Obviously it was an extreme example, but it's one of the biggest leaks in a Fish's game. "God, I better make something out of this hand, so I'll bet small so he'll definitely call" It's quite common, maybe not at 5/10 on Stars or UB, but in the kind of everyday games most people play here, I'd say we've all seen these guys. I know my Buddy list is heavily populated with these people.

Imposter

My comment was aimed at ste

robinlacey

ok cool,figured afterwards that was probably the case
regardless,i don't think your statement that "position isn't all that important either" can ever really be true,i doubt there is a poker player alive who pays too much attention to position

jimbling

if people fold small suited connectors to a table of limping donkeys then they are losing a huge amount of value. If you can't get away from mediocre hands then that is a leak that needs plugging. Obviously its nice and safe to only play strong hands, but you're just as likely to get donked out that way.

I played in a home game recently where about 70% of the field were relatively new to the game. I played about 60% of hands because there was no reason to fold. I was not afraid of any of them and I knew I would not throw away my chips stupidly trying to bluff a calling station. I knew I could make a lot of chips when I hit hard.


I played a huge assortment of hands, and the 3 biggest pots i won was with 46s 79s and A7s. I flopped trebs and turned a full house with the 46 and got an all in caller out of a bottom pair :eek: Little bit of table talk and he was convinced I was bluffing (fish always want to believe you are bluffing)
I got two decent hands in the night. One AK and one QQ and lost with both of them.


TACT, your scenario is not so great really. I mean that argument can be placed for any situation - i.e. set to overset, KK VS AA etc etc. You have to judge if you are behind. But I would consider hitting two pair relatively strong and will be playing unless I get the feeling I'm behind.
Basically that is the last argument for playing poor pf hands.



PS: position is extremely important

Hectorjelly

Yeah I read the OP and thought the fact that he never mentioned position made it almost worthless

Hectorjelly

Also one of the biggest pots was raising K4s on the button isolating a maniac

luckylucky

JustMac wrote:

Could someone explain this to me? I would have thought it applies more to NL. Also I presume it would apply to tournament as well as cash poker?

Imo it would apply to No Limit more so as well, K4 basically is a bag of sheit in any position, particularly in limit play where you are unlikely to get paid off big style if you hit your hand. When it's suited and you are on a table blessed with donks I can understand OP's reasoning to play it on the button with several limpers in a No Limit Game.

Regarding taking off the training wheeels - you a fan of Steve Badger OP?

Atlas_IRL

it wasnt written by me it was written by Ed Miller

i think people missed the

-Ed Miller at the end

i was browsing here( good read)
http://poker.wikia.com/wiki/MicroLimitLibrary#Preflop_Play

thread is under preflop play

luckylucky

Atlas_IRL wrote:

it wasnt written by me it was written by Ed Miller

i think people missed the

-Ed Miller at the end

i was browsing here( good read)
http://poker.wikia.com/wiki/MicroLimitLibrary#Preflop_Play

thread is under preflop play

ah ok So it was Ed Miller borrowing Steve Badger's phrase then and not you

Just to let you know what I'm referring to an article on Steve Badgers's playwinningpoker site that I read a good bit ago
http://www.playwinningpoker.com/articles/00/21.html

Not that I think it's plagarism, so many things wroitten about poker now, you can find one topic written about in hundreds of different ways.

JustMac

Can see that there mixed opinion on its merits in NL game.

TacT wrote:

let's say you limp that K4s and the board comes K84 and you are checked to then called by a complete idiot. He can easily be playing K8 and it's going to cost you money in the long run unless you are very smart about your post flop play.

I think I would probably go broke here. Unless you hold the nuts there is always some risk. I’d be happier about getting it all in here against a player who I think would make the call with just the K rather than someone I’ve pegged as a decent player who wouldn’t make that call.

TacT wrote:

I don't like the advice but I know you should want to take flops for cheap against bad players, so long as you know how hard you need to hit it, in order to get paid and are not going to turn yourself into a fish and payoff better hands than yours.

If I say this makes sense does it contradict that I would probably go broke in that K4 scenario above?