Found this PM; maybe it is useful? (preflop play)

[edge]

I wrote this response to a PM maybe a month or two ago and stumbled across it today. It may be useful for people wondering about optimal preflop play, and for those who believe "LAG" is the cool way to do everything and should be striven for. I also never post or read here, but someone came into HSNL a few weeks ago and asked the posters to drop in SSNL once in a while. Hopefully this isn't redundant and useless.

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My playing style, as well as the styles of every poster on the HSNL board, is more a matter of evolution than anything else. When I first started playing 6-max NL with 100 BB stacks, my preflop PT stats were somewhere around 17/7. This would be 2/4 and 3/6--400 and 600 buy-in (Party used 50 BB stacks when I played the lower stakes). I can't quite remember my stats for .5/1 and 1/2 with 100 BB stacks; I played a bit of it at other sites, but it was probably around the same 17/7 range. At this time, I was playing every pocket pair below JJ for set value and "fit or fold" on the flop--top pair or better or a good draw in order to put more money in. Is this optimal for lower stakes? I'm not sure; by the time I started playing more aggressively I had moved up in stakes and didn't look back.

As I moved to 3/6 and 5/10, I started experimenting with raising every hand that I wanted to play if I was first into the pot. I also tried reraising with weak hands in position to put a lot of pressure on raisers with a wide range. I was playing around 25/15 at this point. This led to success at 5/10, but it also led to difficult decisions when I tried the same strategy at 10/20 against better players. When the 10/20 players know I reraise light, they start calling with any hand with the sole intent of winning the hand before showdown. So, as I got more experience with 10/20, I evolved again and now I play about 17/14 preflop. I have managed to find what I believe to be one of the lowest-variance styles among all the regulars I see at the tables, and I'm still maintaining a high winrate.

In a longwinded way, I'm just saying that what works for me at my specific level against the type of player I encounter will not necessarily work for you against .5/1 or 1/2 players. I could detail my entire preflop strategy (it's not terribly complicated), but following a strict guide that I lay out for you won't really teach you how to develop your own style. If you really want to be a successful player, you have to make your own preflop strategy that meshes with your postflop strategy and, most of all, is something you feel comfortable with. The more aggressively you play preflop, the harder your decisions will be later in the hand, but it may be more profitable. You just have to find that balance point where you feel in control.

Just some guidelines based on my own strategy: I almost never openlimp. The only time I do it is when the table is full of preflop calling stations directly behind me and I have a hand like A4s or 22 UTG. If I feel that, in this particular situation, these hands are profitable from UTG, I'll limp if there's very little chance of taking it down preflop. A lot of the value in raising a wide range comes in being able to take down the blinds. If the players behind me call 40% of their hands against a raise, I don't really want to be playing a weak hand like A4s or 22 out of position in an inflated pot. Of course, simply being the raiser complicates the issue more than being a limper, so there's another factor to consider. After a few limpers, I'll often limp along with those weaker hands, but I like to raise and reraise a lot on the button, even with other players in. I find that I'm comfortable playing raised/reraised pots in position with marginal hands, but you'll have to experiment to see what you prefer doing and how the typical opponent reacts.

You could probably get a guide to beating 2/4 6-max from any of the HSNL posters, and you could methodically grind out a very good profit playing strictly by the book. It all depends on where your aim is, and if you want to really be in control of every table you sit at, and know what to do 99% of the time, you just have to play a lot and refine your game. The boards are here for the other 1% when you don’t know what to do.

[Klompy]

17/14 can be profitable at higher stakes 6-max?

[Miyogi]

[ QUOTE ]
You could probably get a guide to beating 2/4 6-max from any of the HSNL posters, and you could methodically grind out a very good profit playing strictly by the book. It all depends on where your aim is, and if you want to really be in control of every table you sit at, and know what to do 99% of the time, you just have to play a lot and refine your game. The boards are here for the other 1% when you don’t know what to do.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think I speak for all of us here in SSNL by saying that I would like to see such a guide. For "educational" purposes only of course [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Go_Blue88]

I just don't think people can build the necessary instincts to be a big winner if they play too tight and avoid tough situations. It's crucial to try things out and find your comfort level (as edge alluded to). You'll start to realize that you have your own style when you read through posts on these boards and realize that you'd approach a hand a completely different way than most people advise.

[edge]

[ QUOTE ]
17/14 can be profitable at higher stakes 6-max?

[/ QUOTE ]

I sure hope so. I've been doing it for a few months now.

It's a lot easier to err on the side of playing too many hands than too few hands, and it's more damaging as well. Sklansky alluded to this in some posts about "invisible ante" several months ago that most people laughed at, but I think it has merit. Playing fewer hands will reduce variance and the amount of difficult decisions to be made (at high stakes, marginal decisions often result in rock/paper/scissors for stacks) and I really can't be bothered to go through big downswings just to make a slightly larger amount of money per hour.

The best advice I can give regarding preflop is to just play whatever seems comfortable, as long as you're winning. If that means playing 10/7 in a 6-max game, that's fine. As you get more familiar with playing that set of hands, you will naturally end up adding or removing certain hands in certain situations and end up with a sort of equilibrium that represents your own ideal preflop play. It may be entirely different than another winning player's preflop play, or it may be very similar with just a few minor changes. Don't specifically look for situations in which to add more hands preflop just because you think you're playing too tight compared to what people at 2+2 say. As everyone will say about no-limit, postflop skill is much more important than preflop play. They fail to mention that postflop is directly set up by what happens with your first two cards, so it isn't really possible to separate the two. Don't try to emulate the style of a successful poster--your own winning style will come about by itself as long as you understand poker and really think about the players involved in each hand.

And no, I'm not going to type up a guide on how to beat 2/4 6-max. If you just follow a guide blindly you won't understand why the guide recommends what it does and you won't figure out anything about poker.

[Fallen Hero]

bump, this is a good thread, wtf is it doing on the third page with almost no replies?

[AZplaya]

Edge, great post. All of us SSNL'ers are hoping to achieve what you have achieved. raising/reraising marginal hands on the button is something I have been trying to add to my game. Quick question, when you reraise a hand like 87s OTB, and get an unfavorable flop like AK10r, what is your line??? Again, thanks for taking the time to post in SSNL.

[testaaja]

Nice post! Thanks for sharing it.

[Stealthy]

Very nice post. I remember seeing a post from a $400 NL player a couple of months back, who admitted to beng a complete nit and he was running at 14bb/100+ I think whlst being a big multi-tabler.

I played a far more gambling style my last session than I usually do and I KNOW it cost me a lot of $s at low stakes.

[Gelford]

Nice to see a succesfull player advokate a tag approach in these days where everyone thinks that LAG is very sexy

Also a nice touch to emphesize that poker is a very personal thing, what works for some will not work for others.