Saturday, June 4, 2011

What cards to play before the flop

Okay we know who the bad people are now we just need to know what cards we wanna play against them.

First we'll develop a range of cards where we can make easy decisions so can just raise with our cards or check/fold.

Early position we want to play less cards because playing out of position really sucks because our opponents are able react to whatever we do. Playing early position we want to play good cards that can flop things like top pair top kicker or 3 of a kind and super profit.

Early position 1-2 we want our range to be something similar to this


Remember XXo = off suit XXs = suited

Yeah 7.7% of all hands is barely anything but whatever we don't like playing in early position if you wanna play more hands play them on the button or cut off. With this range we'll be able to flop 3 of a kinds, top pairs and if we don't flop anything we can just easily fold.


Middle position we can open a lot more cards something like


17% of hands we could open be careful of the suited aces on a Ace high flop there might we other aces with a higher kicker then yours.

With more cards in this range and position over early position we can safely open raise a lot more hands. The suited connectors like 87s or T9s are there so that we can make flushes and straights with them or semi-bluff people off their hands so that we don't have to make made hands to profit off them. The suited aces are so we can make ace high flushes which beat every other flush and they're great when we have over 150 Big blinds in our stack since bigger stacks with great hands = more money obviously.

Cut off we can open a bunch of hands




Now we have position on almost everyone but the button we we can open even more hands like suited 1 gappers and offsuit broadways like KJ QT JT just watch out if you flop top pair someone might have a better kicker then you and fold if the flop misses you and the flop is a crappy one to bluff in.

Button

Buttons awesome you want to play many many many hands on the button you'll get most of your money in poker on the button and its the perfect position to bluff people off their hands in.


Thats a lot of hands lol sadly you can't play 100% of hands on the button but whatever if you are and your still wondering why your losing money in poker your doing it wrong. Again like the cutoff and middle position watch out for kicker problems with your top pairs like Aces and if you know you can't bluff a guy off their hand then don't bother bluffing. The buttons a great position because everyone will act before you and it makes life a lot easier if your wondering "should I fold or raise or check???"


Blinds

Blinds fucking suck your paying to be in the crappiest position on the flop yay. We want to defend our blinds from steals with cards like pocket pairs to make 3 of a kinds and top pair top kickers like in early position. Most of the time you should just fold your blind because you can get into a lot of crappy spots on the flop being super out of position.

If everyone folds and its a small blind vs big blind scenario you can try to bluff them off their hands preflop if that  fails try the flop they'll miss 66% of the time anyways. Just be sure to know when to stop bluffing don't bother bluffing them out of top pair top kicker without anything to make your bluff look credible.


Just remember this isn't full proof theres probably and is a better opening range then this. You might wanna play less cards middle position, cut off, and button if you don't know what your doing because now that I think about it this range looks similar to a semi-Loose Aggressive range LOL. If you don't have the patience to fold every other card but the cards above then start getting patience. Poker can be profitable if we have the patience to wait, get a few good cards, and get paid off them as we're not good enough to play every card profitably like high stakes ballers. Also remember we'll get owned on the turn and river every now and then poker is a game of skill but there is short term variance which would come and kick us in the balls.

You will lose to stupid shit like AQ to AT on the river, KK to A3 on the river AA to 22 all-in preflop. Losing top pair top kicker on a Ace high board to a 22 who for some reason called your enormous bet and a 2 lands on the turn. Don't be mad if you lose just suck it up and keep playing if you tilt or rage thats when your money would start spewing away. If you can't suck it up go home and come back another time.

7 comments:

  1. Wow man, pretty detailed.
    Must have taken ages to put together.

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  2. My brain hurts. Impressive, though! Following!

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  3. dang all the magic was taken out of poker

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  4. you got your poker face on I see

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  5. really good analysis of a complicated strategy

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  6. I prefer Blackjack and Spanish 21.

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