Pre Flop Poker Strategy

This blog hasn’t been strategy-oriented for quite awhile, which was a direct consequence of me realizing that there was a lot of better strategy content out there on the web than what I, a small stakes hangaround, could offer. However, there are a few things to be said about that, and they are

* my strategy views aren’t “bad.” I’m not Ed Miller, but I do occasionally think something through and can make pretty coherent arguments for them. Or so I’d like to think.
* I like to keep book on poker theory “discoveries” I make, as it helps me with my learning process, and
* perhaps people like occasionally getting tips and pointers from someone who plays at their own level.

So after playing exclusively no-limit for about five weeks (whoop-de-doo, Mr. Paulsson) I’ve had three stages that I have gone/am going through. They are:

1) Get experience. This means play lots of hands. I started out 6-7 tabling to just try to amass a lot of hands. I also played a style that was more showdown bound than would perhaps be optimal, because I wanted to know what people “meant” when they did certain things. This stage was actually wildly profitable for me, despite going against popular wisdom that you shouldn’t be a calling station. What I found was that people were bluffing. A lot.

2) Identify my primary weaknesses. This went on in parallel with getting experience, and really, what I discovered was that I can get myself in some really difficult situations now and then. My primary strength is hand reading and feel for the game (in limit, you go to showdown roughtly 40% of the time that you see a flop, so with about a hundred thousand showdowns lodged in the back of my head, I have a decent feeling for how often different combos appear), and my big weakness is finding myself playing a big pot out of position.

3) Practise, which is what I’m doing now. This is not at all the same as just getting experience. I’ve now moved down to only four tables (and will likely keep it that way for at least the rest of this month) because I want to give every decision a little more time. Playing my opponents more, opening up more in position, and sizing my bets better.

Now, really, if I were to pick one skill that could single-handedly transform someone into a winner at small stakes NL, it would be bet-sizing. Sizing your bets (and raises) in such a way that you will stack your opponents when you have a big hand, keeping the pot small when you’re vulnerable, and making your future decisions easy (as opposed to hard) is such a key feature of NL that it makes starting hand selection seem completely unimportant.

So what’s to it?

Really, it starts preflop. Deciding what kind of pot you’d like to play with the hand you’re holding is the first step. Pocket pairs can often play big pots, because they can flop sets. Suited connectors also. Big aces (e.g. AK) will often find itself being on the wrong end of the stick when all the money goes in postflop, so they should avoid being in situations where all the money goes in. I’m not going to give you a chart to follow that states how much you should raise with hand X, but let me give an example of why it’s important, starting with how the preflop raise size sets up the whole hand:

$100 stacks, $1 blinds. You’re on the button with QQ. A player in middle position opens to $3, and it’s folded to you. Let’s see what happens with three different scenarios: One small, one medium and one big. For simplicity, we’ll test what happens when one bet goes in on each street, and this is to show just how powerful and important the preflop bet sizing is.

Scenario 1: You just call. Blinds fold. There’s $7 in the pot. With three bets going in, each being roughly 3/4ths of the pot, we’ll find that…

flop: $7 + $5 + $5
turn: $17 + 13 + 13 = $43
river: $43 + 33 + 33 -> final pot = $109.

Scenario 2: You minraise to $6. There will be $13 in the pot before the flop.

flop: $13 + 9 + 9
turn: $31 + 21 + 21 = $73
river: $73 + 54 + 54 -> final pot = $183. Here, you’re virtually stacking each other with just regular bets.

Scenario 3: You raise the pot to $10. The pot is $21 before the flop.

flop: $21 + 15 + 15
turn: $51 + 39 + 39 = $129
river: $129 + all-in + all-in = $201.

The relatively innocent decision between raising preflop and calling - which on the surface seemed to be a $7 difference - caused a total cumulative difference of $50. Of course, you have the option of raising big preflop and then checking one of the streets after the flop. This is the most efficient way of keeping the pot smaller, but it carries with it an inherent problem: What street will you check, and will your opponent cooperate? If you bet the turn with the intention of checking behind any river card, what will you do if your opponent check-raises all-in? Etc.

The cumulative effect makes some fairly counter-intuitive plays good. For instance, it’s perfectly okay to make a “pot sweetening” raise with some speculative hands if you think it greatly increases your chance of stacking someone postflop, despite the fact that you will often fold when you miss. Making a small raise with small pocket pairs on the button after several limpers, for instance, is a play like that. Because of the same cumulative effect as above, four people putting in $3 instead of four people putting in $1 can mean a great deal of difference in the size of the final pot. And being in position, you have a great chance of making sure that bets go in on every street when you flop something big.

Try to make the cumulative effect your friend rather than foe. You don’t have to make a huge overbet to get all your money in with a monster, unless you attempt to slowplay and your opponents won’t cooperate. If you just bet three streets, starting with a pot sized bet on the flop, you typically shouldn’t have to make any huge bets anywhere along the line in order to get every dollar into the middle. Your opponent might call every bet, being offered 2.5:1, but still find himself without a stack at the end of the hand. By the time they realize that they’re probably beat, it’s “too late,” so to speak. They’re committed to calling that last bet because the pot odds are too good for them to fold now.

If you’re looking to build a commitment-sized pot - a pot where the effective stack size means that both you and your opponent get such attractive pot odds that folding is out of the quesiton - take a look at what your opponent’s stack sizes are, determine how the cumulative effect can work in your favour, and size the preflop raise accordingly. For practise, look at some common stack sizes in the games that you play. For instance, if you play $25NL, find out how big of a preflop investment means you will get it all-in with three bets, if your effective stack is…

1) $25.
2) $15.
3) $40

… etc. Furthermore, also calculate how much you need to get in preflop in order for only TWO bets to get all the money in postflop, for the same stack sizes. Calculate it, and memorize it. Then start playing with different raises accordingly, and I think you will find that your postflop decisions will become much easier.