Taking off the training wheels. One players thoughts.

[ThunderEagle]

First, the post.
Preflop Play: Take off the training wheels

I've been concentrating on this lately, and I think I have some suggestions for others looking to do this.

It has been talked about enough here, in individual hand history threads, in its own thread, in the FAQ, etc, but I think we all have a tendancy to overlook what is being said, or just not understand it. We all (almost) have read SSH, we all reread sections of it, but how many of us actually go back and reread the preflop stuff? I mean it is considered to be the least important aspect of the game right? We say, "My post flop AF number is only 1.2, there is my biggest problem, not my PF play. I mean just following the preflop chart verbatium drastically increased my win rate."

Well, I kept seeing suggestions about raising this hand, or folding that hand, and I just didn't quite get it. As I dug a little bit more, I discovered the true answer is "it depends". It always is, isn't it?

That is OK, as it really isn't that hard once you study the situation. If you have a few months under your belt, you have an idea of the starting hands to play from the charts. This is good, that is exactly what they were designed to do. Now, time to get SSH out and reread some of the Preflop sections, if you haven't done it since the first time through, I think you may be surprised at how good it is. Don't start from the beginning of the section, skip to "Preflop Hand Categories" (pg. 65) Now study this section. Don't worry about which specific hands are a "Monster", concentrate on how and why those hands are played, not what two cards make up those hands.

Go through them all, understand what they are talking about. I found it useful to make notes for myself. I created a little Word document that is sort of the Cliff notes of that sections. Then for a couple of days I used that to reference instead of any chart on "marginal" starting hands. Insted of looking what Ed Miller says about KQo in MP, I looked at the number, who, and how good the players that entered the pot before me, and then at the players behind me and who was likely to enter the pot, then evaluated my hand.

We need to truely understand the aspects of a starting hand:
<ul type="square"> [*]High Card strength [*]Suitedness[*]Connectedness[*]Position[/list]
I know seasoned posters are just rolling their eyes at this, but I've discovered it is critical to winning Limit Hold'em and us newbies don't quite understand how to take this leap. We need Dad there holding the back of the bike the first few times till we get the hang of it. The information is right there in SSH, it just gets overlooked and not understood till you have several K hands under your belt. Once you have really diseceted the aspects of a starting hand then you stop thinking about AJo in MP3. You starting thinking, "I have some good high card strenght and connectedness, a player in front of me just limped in and has a 70% VP$IP and there are these two guys behind me that are really tight, I raise, I get them out, and maybe BB comes along for the ride, but my goal is to get into it with the fish." Now, AJo is pretty easy to just raise in an unraised pot anyhow, but we just didn't know why. Change that situation to KTs, not typically a raising hand from MP, but in the situation above it can become quite profitable. You raise for several reasons, first you have 3 decent parts of the aspects fo a starting hand, but you are subject to domination. You raise to get the better players to fold, thereby gaining you position over the players that are not as good. If one of those two cold call, or even worse, 3 bet you, then you have to be very careful post flop as they probably have you dominated, but if they fold, and most of the time they will, then you are in a very good position against your weak limper.

Forget if you are in UTG+2, or MP3, or the CO. Not that position isn't important, as it is, but your exact seat isn't as important as the players to your left and right. That much doesn't change from UTG+2 to MP1.

I hope this is helpful to others still skinning their knees without the training wheels.

[bozlax]

[ QUOTE ]
I know seasoned posters are just rolling their eyes at this

[/ QUOTE ]

Not at all. Good post.

[ QUOTE ]
I mean it is considered to be the least important aspect of the game right?

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, not at all. I would actually say preflop is the MOST important part of your learning curve. Good preflop play is the foundation to winning poker, and we all know what happens to a building if you take the foundation away.

What preflop IS though, is the part of the hand where you can make mistakes and lose the least as a result of those mistakes, so many players don't give it enough attention. It is also easy to make some hard and fast rules that actually work, so people are less inclined to do the work to understand WHY they are doing what they are doing. Maybe your thread will help to change that.

[Fantam]

Nice post. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[car ramrod]

nice post

[ThunderEagle]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I mean it is considered to be the least important aspect of the game right?

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, not at all. I would actually say preflop is the MOST important part of your learning curve. Good preflop play is the foundation to winning poker, and we all know what happens to a building if you take the foundation away.



[/ QUOTE ]

My intent with that statement was that I think we misunderstand some comments made about preflop play. It is often said that mistakes made preflop are small compared to post flop mistakes, and comments about the starting hand chart being the least important part of SSH. Newer players mistakenly interpert that as preflop play being unimportant.

I'll liken this to great athletes when they talk about great coaches. They often say "the coaches put us in positions to succeed." Making the right decisions preflop put you in the position to succceed post flop.

[plonker]

Brilliant post I hopefully will stop "skinning knees" soon.

Think you have just helped me bring a leak to my attention.

VEry good post

[beaster]

Very nice post. Charts get you off and running, but one needs to evaluate

- hole cards
- position
- action to your right
- possible action to your left

BEFORE hitting the action button. A good sign you're on your way is if you're not checking the action buttons before its your turn -- you're waiting to size up what transpires in front of you before deciding to call/raise/fold. Once I noticed myself doing this I realized I no longer needed the charts.

[kerowo]

Pre-flop play may only give you the chance to make small mistakes, but you get to make a metric buttload of them and they will add up much more than making a misplay with quads or a straight flush draw.

[AJay]

Looks like we have a winner! Not that I know what I'm talking about, but I've begun to realize that pre-flop is a lot more important than some people give credit. Here's a quote from David Grey from a recent Full Tilt article:

"...in a game of 7-Stud, I was dealt an Ace as my up-card. The bring-in bet had been raised and I re-raised.

Then, two top-rate pros with no more than their antes in the pot called my re-raise. There are only a couple of hands that might justify their calls. However, as the hand proceeded with me as the aggressor, it became clear that the callers of my third-street re-raise didn't have much at all. One held three unconnected hearts, the other had a middle pair with no kicker.

What were these guys thinking? It's hard to know, but my guess is that one of them let his desire to gamble get the better of him. Though that can pay dividends in well-chosen spots, this wasn't one of them. The other might have thought he could outplay me later in the hand.

In the end, neither of their strategies makes much sense. I made it expensive enough that it was a lousy spot to gamble, and given that I've declared that I have a pair of aces, there's little chance that I'm going to get bluffed out of the pot.

I think this hand highlights a couple of the mental traps that sometimes snag advanced players. As players improve, they inevitably see more opportunities for profit, and thus, see potential in a greater number of hands. But it's a slippery slope, and a player can easily lose the long view and convince himself that he can make any starting hand work out.

This just isn't the case - especially when playing fixed-limit games. Even at the highest levels, profitability in limit poker is largely determined by a player's ability to choose the right starting hands. If you fail in this regard or somehow lose your discipline, it's nearly impossible to recover. Fancy plays and good decisions on later streets cannot overcome early-hand mistakes. If you're throwing money into a pot when you shouldn't, you're going to lose money. There's no way around it.

Always remember that in limit poker, hand selection is the foundation for your entire game. You can't build a solid game on a weak foundation."

[Aaron W.]

[ QUOTE ]
Looks like we have a winner! Not that I know what I'm talking about, but I've begun to realize that pre-flop is a lot more important than some people give credit. Here's a quote from David Grey from a recent Full Tilt article:

"...in a game of 7-Stud, I was dealt an Ace as my up-card. The bring-in bet had been raised and I re-raised.

Then, two top-rate pros with no more than their antes in the pot called my re-raise. There are only a couple of hands that might justify their calls. However, as the hand proceeded with me as the aggressor, it became clear that the callers of my third-street re-raise didn't have much at all. One held three unconnected hearts, the other had a middle pair with no kicker.

What were these guys thinking? It's hard to know, but my guess is that one of them let his desire to gamble get the better of him. Though that can pay dividends in well-chosen spots, this wasn't one of them. The other might have thought he could outplay me later in the hand.

In the end, neither of their strategies makes much sense. I made it expensive enough that it was a lousy spot to gamble, and given that I've declared that I have a pair of aces, there's little chance that I'm going to get bluffed out of the pot.

I think this hand highlights a couple of the mental traps that sometimes snag advanced players. As players improve, they inevitably see more opportunities for profit, and thus, see potential in a greater number of hands. But it's a slippery slope, and a player can easily lose the long view and convince himself that he can make any starting hand work out.

This just isn't the case - especially when playing fixed-limit games. Even at the highest levels, profitability in limit poker is largely determined by a player's ability to choose the right starting hands. If you fail in this regard or somehow lose your discipline, it's nearly impossible to recover. Fancy plays and good decisions on later streets cannot overcome early-hand mistakes. If you're throwing money into a pot when you shouldn't, you're going to lose money. There's no way around it.

Always remember that in limit poker, hand selection is the foundation for your entire game. You can't build a solid game on a weak foundation."

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, preflop is important. But it's important conceptually, not important in that you should never drift away from your favorite starting hand chart.

It should be noted that 7-stud is a game where luck comes at the end of the hand and not at the beginning. This means that early play requires more skill than late play. In hold'em, the reverse is true as luck comes early in the hand. Therefore, postflop skill is valued over preflop hand selection.