SSHE Book Club Discussion - Part Two: Preflop Concepts

[Cerril]

SSH mentions, and it's pretty much the essence of the whole book, that rather than looser games (covered in HEFAP), SSH deals with just plain bad players. This makes all the difference. You're less likely to get punished postflop, able to push edges much harder.

You also have to push different advantages. Semibluffing isn't nearly as strong a weapon and often checkraising is either superfluous or will actually cost you bets. Anyway, that isn't your question. You'll play good hands that are subject to domination by great hands more often because you're getting better odds in all circumstances and you can pretty much never narrow your opponents down to a hand that dominates you, even with hyperaggressive play

[Cerril]

I know we're not supposed to focus too much on PF play, but in the interest of 'near perfect' preflop strategy I'd have liked some better delineation of hand selection. It's very, very rare I can actually use the loose game strategy online, but I'd like to know what the best adjustments to make in a slightly aggro game are and in a slightly tight-but-passive game are. ~20-25% VP$IP with <3% PFR tables are pretty common, especially at 3/6 and filled with bad play of a slightly different type than ultra loose players.

Postflop strategy deals with enough circumstances that it adapts, but some hands need to be chucked here that shouldn't elsewhere.

Likewise at slightly looser but much more aggressive tables. With two or three people with >12% PFR stats you're going to be seeing a whole lot of raised flops. At your average tables you'll still be seeing too much [cold]calling, but it might only be 4 on average to the flop, so you can't be playing too speculative of hands. Obviously once it's been raised you can make your adjustments from the charts and guidelines, but what about in pots that are often raised when you're in EP?

[Toonces]

[ QUOTE ]
I found it a little odd that one comment says that you need almost perfect preflop play to be a winning player in the long run, but that players concentrate too much on preflop play.

I know that you can -sort of- reconcile those, but the implication is that there is a 'perfect' preflop strategy, and deviating from it even slightly is going to hamper your WR seriously, implying that once you get 'decent' at postflop play, you should come back and reexamine the smallest details and nitpick over every Axs and playable SB hand. Obviously, that's not true.

[/ QUOTE ]

OK, I see where the disconnect here is. Every time you make a mistake pre-flop, there is a cost associated with a mistake. The cost is based on the magnitude of the mistake times the probability of the hand occuring times the probablility of you playing the hand incorrectly.

For example, let's say that playing 74s under the gun costs 0.27 BB in EV while playing A4s under the gun earns 0.02 BB in EV over folding. You need to know to fold 74s UTG (and all the hands like it) every time, or there will be a huge hole in your game. On the other hand, if you always folded A4s UTG or always called with it, or switched it up based on how your table was playing, it would make very little difference to your overall performance.

Therefore, for the easy decisions (at least 95% of the hands) you always have to make the right call. But its not worth going down to the 3rd decimal place of the really close EV decisions. Trying to analyze the coin-flip hands is a waste of energy.

[Cerril]

Yeah... That's pretty much how I see it too, certainly in light of clarifications from Ed in the forums at various points here. Basically, his comment from the forums about how the Preflop recs were highly simplified and marginal calls were lumped one direction or the other (depending on the skill to play them profitably postflop) without discussion should probably have been in the book somewhere.

[Jay36489]

I have made an excel spread sheet that lists the starting hand reccomendations in a way that is very quick to read when you are playing. I would like to post it in case anyone else might find it of use but is that ok? This is Ed's system (intellectual property) and I'm not sure he would want it given away.

[larrondo]

Someone's already done that. There is a link to it somewhere back in this post.

I'd like to see how different yours is, though.

[Jay36489]

Oh, I hadn't read the whole thread (I am going to get back to it). He's got a much better way of doing it, nevermind.

[MEbenhoe]

[ QUOTE ]

On a side note, perhaps I was a little careless in saying that suited connectors were the most profitable hands, what I should have said is that if played correctly; suited connectors can win you some huge pots. My motivation in saying this was to encourage beginners to learn how to play these cards.

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Ahh beginners encouraging beginners, I love it.

On a serious note johnny, from reading your early posts you are displaying the classic newbie first few post traits of trying to act like an expert and getting into arguments with people who clearly know more than you at this point. I did it myself when I first started posting here. My advice to you is to kick back read often, post rarely, and get a feel for the game of poker. You'll be far better off this way.

[MEbenhoe]

This thread as I expected ended up being very long, even though its probably the section of the book that deserves the least attention. The reason for this is that people obsess over their preflop play even though this isn't where you make most of your money in hold em. Also, they get nitpicky over marginal situations such as whether calling with Axs in EP is a good play. The answer to this question is it doesn't matter. Whether or not you play Axs in EP is not going to make or break you as a poker player. Its a marginal gain or loss in EV either way. While I would encourage you to follow the book standards, on a lot of the marginal plays you can go either way depending on a lot of varying aspects of your current game that the book can't take into account.

With that said, I think the starting hand charts in this book are outstanding. They give a player a solid foundation upon which to build their preflop play. Depending upon your skill level you may want to follow these guidelines exactly or give yourself a little wiggle room to make some slightly different plays.

If after reading this preflop section you've been able to learn the ideas that "Tight is Right", not to play trash hands, the value of speculative hands, the value of position, the importance of being suited, not to play weak hands out of position, not to cold call raises with mediocre hands, and a general idea of what hands to play where, well then you are set for this section and this other nitpicky business means nothing.

Maybe we can get a discussion this spirited going in the postflop section?

[parappa]

I'd like to talk a bit about the "assume that the game is loose until proven otherwise" advice. I play the tight guidelines in nearly all situations, as I never, not even at the nanolimits, see games where there are routinely 6-8 players to the flop. So I've ignored this advice and treat the game as tight until proven otherwise, then I might, if the game is passive, add a few hands, by doing stuff like limping small pairs and Axs up front.

Does anyone care to defend the "assume it's loose" position?