Is Pre-Flop the New Post-Flop?

[andyfox]

I was thinking about Mike L.'s 300-600 post where he played J-6s when I read this by a respected longterm 2+2er with whom I have played and who is one of the best I've played with:

"the conventional wisdom is that preflop decisions are fairly routine after you have gained some experience and where you make money is with your postflop decisions. I wonder if that is really true. In many games that I play in, I don't find that there is much difference in ability betwen me and most of my opponents when it comes to postflop play. Preflop is where I distinguish myself from these guys. Specifically, most guys who think that they play well and do in fact play well, play hands that are money losers. Put another way, they handicap themselves too much preflop and can't make it up with their excellent postflop play.

"So, IMO, we have come full circle in Hold 'em: Preflop is where you make your money these days."

Comments?

[mike l.]

where did you read that?

one thing im sure is untrue in my case is this: "In many games that I play in, I don't find that there is much difference in ability betwen me and most of my opponents when it comes to postflop play."

[Schneids]

If you somehow had access to being able to see your opponent's hole cards without them knowing it, you could probably play almost every hand. This would especially be the case in short handed and HU play.

Obviously, we can't. But that's still our goal: to be able to play "perfect" poker.

If you're the best player at your table, you can play more hands.

It's all about two things:
1) a willigness to get your feet wet and try to take away pots when you don't have anything, against opponents you either know are capable of folding sometimes, or just against people who you think are maybe in that realm of playing(folding) at this exact moment in time (ie maybe it's a TAG playing showdown monkey, but the flop is Q32 and he just raised you but you realize his raise can very well be air, so you reraise with air because everything feels right about it and you really think if he had flopped a pair he would have just called on the flop... http://www.pokerhand.org/?613495 for instance. Sure it's also lucky I was right, but I don't think it's luck that I made the decision and it happened to work out, because I felt very confident about what my opponent's tendencies were going to be on that board at that moment in time... A slightly less good player would call his bet and check/fold on a turn that doesn't improve his hand...).
2) Recognizing when #1 is not possible because your opponents are either showdown monkeys, or normally tight players on tilt, and then changing your gears to bet maximization when you do have something (ie implied odds with hands such as J6 sooted).

In the perfect world, we have an instantaneous switch be #1 and #2, and constantly make the right decisions about whether it's a pot we should check/fold, or check/raise.

In the real world, it's a little tougher.

Can an expert play more hands than an average person? Certainly. We're not in disagreement with that, I don't think.

But maybe the gap of difference between an expert and the other very good players who are winners at high stakes has closed enough that the lines are blurred about what's profitable and what isn't.

I know in my 3+ hours playing last night, I won a loooooot of pots where I didn't have anything, but through a combo of knowing board textures to fight for it and generally having a sense of my opponent's 'playing moods,' I won a lot more than I would have by "playing tight." (some of these hands got linked to in a BBV thread I made last night..the Q32 example above was one of many from last night, and also happened to be against a very good opponent)

I personally feel that a very good player can play a lot more hands than others, and would disagree with the hypothesis that "preflop is where we make our money these days in LHE." It's just becoming a trickier beast at being able to balance/recognize when situation #1 is possible and when situation #2 is the only possibility, because more people are playing better and better and things are getting tougher in general.

[stinkypete]

good preflop play is damn important. there's too many donkeys who are otherwise decent players who have some preflop chart memorized and dont alter their play.

it's precisely the reason why i can openraise all kinds of crap preflop in a lot of mid-high stakes games. nobody ever 3-bets me, even when im raising 15-20% of hands. they are stupid. they can't play preflop.

once in a while there'll be a guy who thinks he's adjusting to my lagginess by cold calling my raises a lot (and then folding the flop if he misses, and letting me off cheap when he hits).

having played the 100/200 for about a month and a half this fall at commerce, i can say that there were exactly 2 people in that game who had any clue how to adjust to my loose preflop play. they were deathdonkey and mike l. everyone else sucks.

EDIT: the point i'm trying to make is that preflop play is all about adjusting to your opponents. most people don't do it well. your average decent live player is capable of adjusting to different opponents postflop, but usually they're not capable of finding ways to maximize profits preflop. and in highish stakes games these days, adjusting preflop is an important part of winning big.

[J.A.Sucker]

Hi Andy,

No. The turn is where the money is. It may be the river, too, as more people start making "tough decisions" in the future, which is what I'm seeing more of these days.

The Sucker