[il_martilo]

[ QUOTE ]
No Limit Texas Hold Em is a game of small surrenders and large victories. As we all know, it is very difficult to make a strong holding in this game. As a result of this knowledge we should be willing to make many attempts at stealing small pots. Many pots should consist of one strong effort to steal the money in the middle, once called we should usually shutdown and concede the pot.

Since we realize the difficulty of making strong holdings, our pre-flop play should consist around two equally important factors and one less important factor:

1) Type of Hand:

We want hands that have a high expected value postflop. That is, we want a hand that has the potential to make a very strong holding or no holding at all. Examples of these kinds of hands include: 22-JJ/AK/45s-KQs/All Axs

These hands carry high implied odds and have the ability to make very strong holdings such as sets/straights/flushes and full houses.

Hands that carry reverse implied odds should be avoided when calling raises. These hands include: KQo/KJo/K10o/AJo/A10o

The other kind of hand that we should be looking to play are hands that make a pretty strong hand quite often.

Hands that consistently make over pairs greater than 50% of the time include QQ/KK/AA. They can win medium sized pots unimproved and even larger pots some of the time.

The second factor which is of equal important to "hand types," is the difference in skill between you and your opponents.

When comparing pre flop equity edges vs opponents. One can see that most hands are rarely more than a 60-40 dog to most other hands. Therefore, a No Limit player will make most of his profit from his post flop play. The reason for this is two-fold. Because the amount of money being put into the pot pre flop is smaller relative to post flop. And the equity difference in hands post flop are so much larger. It makes sense that being proficient in decisions post flop are more profitable because 1) mistakes are magnified because of the equity disparity in hands and 2) The pot exponentially grows bigger on every street.

The Third Factor which is more or less a subset of the second factor is position.

Everything in poker should be done more in position than out of position. As a general rule, we should be making thinner value bets, more bluffs and 3-betting with a wider range when in position. Conversely, we should be playing more straight forward or "ABC" when out of position. For this reason and this reason alone, the button (the best absolute position possible) should be your most profitable position. Your second most profitable position should theoretically be the CO (cutoff). And your least profitable position should be the blinds, and this is because of two reasons.

1) We are forced to put money in the pot without knowing the strength of our hand
2) We are in the worst absolute position possible

So when you decide to play a hand in No Limit Hold Em always remember three things: the type of hand you have, how good your opposition is and your position throughout the hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

In most cases, these are all VERY valid points and its good to be reminded of these things, although I think most fairly good players know this intuitively.

However, I think people OFTEN grossly underestimate how important your opposition is when considering your action to a preflop raise with a marginal holding (AJ, KQ, KJ type hands). With these types of hands, the nature of the opposition can make any actio between insta-folding and insta- 3 betting acceptable. One thing I think we all get in the habit of when playing 700 hands an hour is to not bother with situations we deem to be very marginal. However, I have been making a bigger effort to isolate super-aggros (30/20/10 type players) with marginal hands when I'm in position, and have noticed that I can often seta trap against them with KQ or KJ as if it was AK or AQ because they have such a weak range. That is, even though my hand is weaker, there average hand will also be weaker, so the relative strength of my hand (equity advantage) stays the same.