A very common question among beginners is “How tight or how loose should I play?” In other words, should I play fewer hands and wait for good cards (tight) or take my chances and try to hit good hands by seeing more flops (loose). Thinking more specifically, “What percentage of hands should I play before the flop?” These are two excellent questions, but the answer is much more complex than a simple number. After all, poker is a dynamic game and you must adjust your decisions according to the situation and your opponents.
Since there is no fixed answer to this question, let's move on to post flop, the moment when the three community cards are exposed and you already have a game. Experienced players will have better post flop skills and will be able to play a greater number of hands more efficiently. This is exactly why we recommend that beginners and intermediate players try to play a smaller number of hands – to get through fewer difficult situations post flop, where they are not as experienced.
There are some interesting thoughts that we must understand in order to have a better game. These are the thoughts below that will make all the difference in your game:
If a hand is good enough to call a bet, it is good enough to raise.
If the action has folded to you (i.e. no one has entered the hand yet), and you have a hand that you really want to play, you should enter the hand by raising. If you don't believe your hand is good enough to raise, then give up and fold. This prevents your opponent from realizing that your hand is weak by limping in (just calling the bet, instead of raising), and also forces your opponents to call more when you actually have a good hand.
Early position hands in a full ring cash game (full table, with nine players)
Early position is usually the first three players at a nine-person table. We also call early position Early Position or EP for short. In this position you have at least six players to act behind you, so you need better hands to play. Typically, solid players (those who play only strong cards) will play with 66+/AQ+ only. This is a very low number, only 6.5% of hands.
This may seem too tight, but remember that by raising in early position you are risking your chips against six opponents, and you will still have to play out of position if you receive one or more calls (get paid by one or more players). Because of these disadvantages, we recommend playing with a smaller number of hands.
Hands for middle position in a full ring cash game (full table, nine players) or for early position if the table is six players
Middle positions are the positions that are in second and third place before the button (dealer). In this situation, there are few players acting behind us, so if we get called, we can play in position, and that is good. Based on this principle, we can open up our range (number) of hands that we will play a little. Our only concern in this position is the button and the few players who still have position on us.
The tighter these players are, the more we can widen our range. If they are loose, we will still have to play tighter. As a baseline we recommend playing 22+/AT+/KJ+/99s-QJs/A2s-A5s. This represents a total of 15.5% hands. If we have tight players in position on us, we can widen our range to 56s-78s, QJ/A9s/K9s/KTs/QTs/J9s.
Once you feel more confident with your post-flop skills, you can start adding more hands to your range. Just be sure to consider how loose the players in position are on you. Playing a hand like 56s too often out of position will only lose you money in the long run.
Hands for final positions: Cutoff/Button
When you are in the cutoff (the position just to the right of the button), your play will pretty much depend on what the button is like. If the button is tight, you can play from the cutoff as if you were on the button. What does this mean? We will be raising about 70% of hands. As a rule, from the cutoff we will be opening about 25% of hands, which means pretty much any pair, any suited ace, A9o+, any Broadway (combination of two face cards), any suited connector (connected and suited cards), and also K8s+, Q8s+, J8s+, and T8s+.
On the button, you can easily raise 50% hands or more. You are guaranteed to play in position and this is a huge advantage. If one of the blinds loves to 3-bet (re-raise your bet before the flop) and you don't like to play 3-bet pots with weaker hands, then it is worth reducing your opening range a bit to avoid this type of situation. However, if they are loose and like to call and play out of position, take advantage of this, raise with a large number of hands and you will certainly be able to play profitably, thanks to the position over your opponents.
The small blind
If everyone folds and you are the small blind, you should try to find out how tight the big blind is. If he is too tight, you can abuse him and steal a lot. Despite this hypothesis, we have to consider that the player in the big blind has a high tendency to call you and play in position against you, so we have to be careful with which hands we enter so as not to put ourselves in bad situations. The small blind's range should be similar to the cutoff's, assuming the BB is not too tight. If the big blind is folding a lot of hands (for example 62% of hands or more), then we can raise with any two cards and still make a profit in the long run. The vast majority of players, however, will call more often in the big blind, so we should be a little more selective and think carefully before trying to steal the big blind.
Playing in any position with a raise ahead
Generally, if there is a raise before us, that is, if someone has already entered the hand aggressively, then we need a better hand than theirs to continue, or at least a hand with good implied odds (implied odds are the chances we have of winning all or a large part of our opponent's chips). For example, if someone raises in early position, according to what we studied above, we can imagine that this opponent has 66+/AQ+. We are not going to make money calling with hands like AJ or KQ against these hands, so it is better to just fold. On the other hand, a hand like 55 gives us a good chance of winning a lot of money, considering that if we hit the set (hit a set on the flop) we could be against an over pair (a pair higher than the three cards exposed on the board) and make a good profit in this case.
Generally, the rule for trying to hit a set is: we win 20x as much as we need to call when we hit our set. Why? Because this takes into account the fact that sometimes, our opponent will also have a set, higher than ours, and we will lose, and he may also have a hand like KK and when he sees an A on the flop he may end up getting scared, folding and we won't win much with our set.
When you are 3-betting, you should think about why you are doing this. When you start, your mindset should be: let's re-raise someone who has a worse hand than you, but who will call you. Once you feel comfortable, you can consider adding a few extra hands to your range, but you should always know why you are 3-betting. Only 3-bet if you can achieve one of two goals: to get called by worse hands than you, or to make better hands fold, thus giving you the pot.
Tournaments
At the beginning of the tournament, the dynamics are similar to cash games, considering that the players are deep stacked (with a large amount of big blinds available). As the game progresses and the stacks get smaller, we will start to give more importance to pairs and stop giving much importance to plays like flushes and sets, considering that we will have to risk a lot, without a good chance of winning a large amount of chips, since our stacks are small.
Article translated and adapted from the original: Poker Starting Hands Percentage
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