It's easy to get lost when evaluating your preflop strategies. It's easy to come up with some rationalization for almost any preflop play. 3-betting with 85o? Of course! You figured your opponent would fold. Calling a raise with K9o from the front of the table? Why not? You know the aggressor is a bad player and that you could beat him.
Without some basic principles to base your preflop strategy on, almost any play can make sense. To protect yourself from this kind of thinking, I recommend running your ideas through a strategy checklist. Your preflop plays should, for the most part, adhere to what is written on the checklist. If they do, you are probably playing correctly. If not, you should reconsider your game.
#1 Principle – Play tight preflop!
You can vary the range of hands you play, sometimes favoring connected cards and other times favoring off-suit high cards, for example, but don't stray too far from your basic range. If you're out of position, you should play about 15% of hands. If you're on the button, about 35%. From the cutoff and lowjack, you can vary the frequency to somewhere in between.
The problem with playing too many hands is that you will often find yourself in situations where your hand will be rubbish post flop. In today's games, unless you play extremely well, it is difficult to overcome this kind of disadvantage.
Principle #2 – Avoid facing players who demonstrate strength
Your opponents at stakes $1-$2 usually give you a lot of information about the strength of their hands, and this information starts to come in before the flop. If someone rarely raises, and then raises a random hand, assume he or she has a strong hand and react accordingly.
One of the biggest mistakes at these limits is to not consider the strength of a raise and reraise, and not take this type of play seriously. I've seen many times someone face AK on a flop with Kxx, holding hands like KT or K9. You can't avoid this type of scenario entirely, but if you pay attention to the signs of strength that your opponents show, you can at least avoid some situations.
Principle #3 – Attack Weaknesses
This principle is the opposite of #2. If your opponents are playing a lot of hands preflop, it means you have the potential to take a lot of money. When you suspect that your opponents have entered a game with a weak hand, you should attack them with raises.
While limping can be advantageous in some situations, most of the time you want to build a big pot before the flop. The bigger your pot, the more you will win when things go your way. And if you have an advantage, such as when you outplay your opponent before the flop, you will win more often.
So, be aggressive when your opponents don't show strength preflop.
Principle #4 – Don’t try to make hands
Making trips, straights, and flushes is not the way to win. If you think, “Wow, maybe I can get in cheap with this suited hand and maybe I can make a flush!”, you’re thinking like everyone else. If you think like everyone else, you play like everyone else, and you’re going to get beat by the rake. If your opponents are limping, they’re probably weak, and you should probably attack them with a raise, even if your hand isn’t that good.
If you go into the game thinking, “This is a good play because if I miss the flop I can fold and have lost very little on the hand,” you’re probably thinking wrong. That’s a losing logic. If the best thing you can say about a hand is that you know how to fold it, you’re probably not going to play it winningly in the long run.
You should be playing hands that you think you can win the pot with, not lose. Sometimes you will win the pot by having a big hand, but more often you will win with average hands or even bluffs.
Play hands that can win in different scenarios.
#5 Principle – Choose hands that have good equity when called
In regular cash games, a hand like 87s is better than A4o. The real value of 87s is that it hits a wide range of flops, ensuring that you often have good equity. Hands like this are the best option for bluffing. On the other hand, on flops without aces, a hand like A4o will be pretty much useless.
If you feel like you can play aggressively on a wide variety of flops and turns with a particular hand, that's a sign that it's worth playing.
Principle #6 – Defend the blinds against steals, but not against strong raises
This principle is another one that is very important at stakes like $1-$2. It is basically a reformulation of the #2 and #3 Principles, but thinking about situations where you are in the blinds. Many players feel obligated to play from the blinds because of the direct pot odds that you have. However, when stacks are relatively deep, as they usually are in cash games, the immediate odds are not as important as the unfolding of the hand post-flop.
When your opponent makes a big raise, he probably has a strong hand as well, so don't worry about defending the blinds. You may have good odds right away, but unless you have a hand like 44 that is good at taking down strong hands, you're going to have an uphill battle after the flop.
On the other hand, when your opponent makes a weak raise that looks like a steal, defend with lots of reraises and calls. You don't want your opponents to run over your blinds with horrible hands. Even if your hand is also horrible, you can usually win a battle of bad hands if you can come up with a good strategy.
Avoid confronting those who show strength, attack those who show weakness.
Final Thoughts
Good pre-flop play is necessary, but not sufficient, to win in No-Limit Hold'em. For the most part, a solid pre-flop strategy will earn you a few bucks here and there, but you should focus on creating good edges for the later stages of the hand, which is where the big money is.
Article translated and adapted from the original: The Preflop Checklist
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