SSHE & Microlimit online preflop adjustments.

[pokernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
If the leap of "speculative hands prefer big pots" to "not being the first into the pot in late position" is a big one, then the person in question probably has not started thinking beyond the two cards in front him. With such a player, no amount of textbook reading will ever be sufficient, as the subtleties from hand to hand, table to table, and situation to situation are too numerous to put into any reasonably sized book.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed. I picked this example because it was one I could think of. There may be other more subtle examples that I can't think of -- but of course, if I could think of them, I wouldn't have started this whole thread in the first place. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[ QUOTE ]

I think this statement from the Preface of "Theory of Poker" is the *MOST* crucial one for all microlimit players to understand.

Beginning poker players sometimse ask, "What do you do in this particular situation?" There is really no correct answer to that question because it's the wrong question...
The right question is: "What do yo uconsider in this particular situation before determining what to do?

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely. As I wrote in one of my previous posts:

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe what would be worth compiling is a list of factors you ought to be considering when making a decision about whether to (and how to) enter a pot pre-flop beyond what might be captured in a basic chart. For example, a typical pre-flop chart only considers your current position, whether the pot has been re/raised, and in some cases how many others are in the pot with you (and of course what your hole cards are ).


[/ QUOTE ]

I very much had the preface of ToP in mind when I phrased the question this way.

[ QUOTE ]

In 5 lines, you can outline the basic things to consider when entering a pot preflop:

1) What type of hand do I have?
2) How many players are in the pot?
3) How many players are left to act?
4) Is my hand approrpriate for the situation given by 2 and 3?
5) Are there any specific reads which affect my decision?

Number 5 is the wildcard, as this one begins to lead into the questions of blind stealing, isolation raises, and so forth. But you can't get a good answer to question 5 if you can't answer questions 1-4 first. To beat microlimit games, all you need are questions 1-4. Question 5 comes in later, after you've wrapped your mind around the much more difficult question of postflop play (because your postflop skill affects your preflop decision).


[/ QUOTE ]

Those questions are right on the mark for what any player worth his salt should be asking. I'm merely suggesting that you perhaps you can refine that list; i.e., if you refer to the first list as 'first-level' questions, what would be good 'second-level' questions.

For example, there is the question of how much it costs me right now to enter this pot (or better yet, how much is it likely to cost me to enter this pot -- e.g., how likely is there to be a raise behind -- which is definitely related to your question #5).

Along these lines, one could start to think of how #5 might affect the decision. For example, if UTG is fishy and raises pre-flop with a lot of weak hands, and tends to become very passive post flop, I might consider playing more marginal holdings in a pot s/he were involved with than if UTG were TAG and very tricky.

It's likely that this suggestion on my part of a second-level list of questions is not very good. The number of second-level questions may already grow exponentially But at the same time, I haven't given sufficient though to whether that's the case.

Since I can't come up with a good example of such second-level questions based on poker, maybe I can give an analogy based on chess. To make a decision in chess, you have to consider the relative merits of the position on the board. One simple high-level approximation would be to figure out who has more material (and giving proper weighting to that material). In many common situations (especially for a beginning player), that will be good enough to assess who is doing better (granted the highest-level question one could ask is whether the opponents king is check-mated, but most chess players don't constantly ask themselves that at each position...). A series of lower-level questions might be: Does my opponent have any specific threats on the very next move? What is the mobility of my pieces (e.g., do I have a bad bishop or hemmed in knight)? How is my pawn structure (e.g., do I have any isolated pawns)? Who has the initiative? Do I have any weak squares? Are any of my pieces vulnerable to capture (e.g., a hemmed in knight, a trapped queen, an isolated pawn on an open file)? Is my King vulnerable to checkmate? And the list goes on...

Clearly no book can teach someone to consider all these questions, and you'd probably run out of time trying to answer all of them. Good chess players can automatically filter out the irrelevant questions and consider the handful that are the most important. I suspect that good poker players can also filter out the myriad of factors involved in making a decision, and focus on the few that matter most.

But some factors are more important than others. For example, what's my opponents threat? (Or in a related sense, are any of my pieces vulnerable to capture?) If you teach someone to just ask that one more question, they are likely to make better decisions. Believe it or not, as obvious as that question might seem, many people (even very strong players) fail to ask it sometimes.

Beyond a basic list of questions for poker (and to be more narrow in scope, for pre-flop play in microlimits hold'em), I am sure there are many others. Of those other questions, I'm interested in trying to figure some good second-level questions to ask. Perhaps the exercise is too complicated, but I am sure that even thinking about it will, in the long run, make me a better player.

[ QUOTE ]
There's an entire archive of posts which have been trying to flesh out various aspects of the story, and there's lots of information about preflop play. But I really think you're just asking the wrong question.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm sure there are some really great threads out there. Someone already pointed me to one -- and I'm sure there are others. If you can think of a thread that's worth reading, and have a link (or can suggest non-obvious search terms that might lead to a hit; e.g., "Ed Miller exploiting reads preflop...") please let me know.

I did try the search function, but it didn't turn up much -- or rather it turned up way too much that wasn't quite relevant.

[Aaron W.]

[ QUOTE ]
Those questions are right on the mark for what any player worth his salt should be asking. I'm merely suggesting that you perhaps you can refine that list; i.e., if you refer to the first list as 'first-level' questions, what would be good 'second-level' questions.

[/ QUOTE ]

Before I get into this some more, I want to re-emphasize something: Postflop play is many many times more important than preflop play. There's a reason that the preflop chapter is only some 50 pages out of the 300 pages of text. As long as you have the solid preflop fundamentals ('first-level' questions), it doesn't really matter what you do. A long time ago, there were some very long, heavily argued debates about raising AJo and KQo in early position. But in truth, they were arguing about differences which were probably on the order of .1 SB. When you reach postflop plays, you're talking about plays that vary by as much as 2-3 SB on the flop, and 1-2 BB on the turn and river. Those preflop differences are essentially negligible as there are too many factors which affect the end result.

To the best of my understanding, all of the 'second-level' questions come down to your ability to assess the other players and your ability relative to theirs.

For example, suppose there is a limper and you've got KTs in middle position. What sorts of lines of reasoning can you follow? Of course, you start with the basics.

1) What type of hand do I have? KTs is a two-way hand. It has high card strength if it's a short-handed pot, plus it has mulit-way strength with the flush possibilities (there's a little straight action there, but it's weaker because of the larger gap).
2) How many players are in the pot? Just one.
3) How many players are left to act? Three plus the blinds.
4) Is my hand appropriate for the situation given by 2 and 3? The hand is definitely worth playing in this spot.

Now the thinking goes to 'level two'. (This is longer and more methodical than what I would usually do, but this is really for illustrative purposes.)

5) Are there any specific reads which affect my decision?

Who is the limper? He's a relatively tight player preflop. Since he limped in early position, I know he has a decent hand. He knows how to raise preflop, so it's probably not a premium hand. His postflop game is pretty straight-forward, leaning towards the weak-tight side.

Who are the players left to act? They all seem loose preflop. I could probably get two limpers if I limp, but if I raise, I may get one or zero. They seem generally passive and I haven't seen anything special out of them postflop.

What about the blinds? They seem pretty average. Neither of them has done anything note-worthy yet.

Do I want to raise or call? If I raise, I can probably keep this pot 3-4 handed. I also expect to have the button a lot. Limping would cause the pot to be 5-6 handed. That gives me pot-pumping opportunities if I flop a draw.

The limper's hand is probably about equal in strength on average to my hand. Sometimes I'll have him dominated when he has QT/JT and sometimes I'll be dominated by KJ/KQ. However, I know that his play is straight-forward enough that I can probably tell on the flop whether he has a pair. This is even more true if I raise.

If I limp, I'm in middle position with some loose/bad players acting after me. My pot-pumping won't be as effective here because I won't likely be able to trap them for two or more bets. I'll bet, and they'll just call. This is unfavorable. But they will also call down with second and third pair if I flop top pair. That's good. I can probably also get away from losing hands if I get raised on the turn because I haven't seen anything fancy out of them.

Decision: Both spots are good. I think the heads up situation is a little better, so I'll raise.

As I said, usually, I don't think this all through. I look at my hand, see the weak limper, and try to decide if I can get heads up with him. If I think I can, I raise. If not, I limp. This tendency has much to do with the fact that I expect that I'm a much better postflop player than the limper. If I had any reason to believe that he was a strong player, I would limp.

Not all decisions require adjustment. AA will always get raised (*ALWAYS*); 72o always gets mucked. Sometimes hands require very little extra information (T9s vs many limpers is a limp) sometimes you need to think a little more (T9s with one loose MP limper and I'm in the cutoff...).

This whole line of reasoning, however, falls under the simple premise set for in the training wheels post:

[ QUOTE ]
The goal of preflop play is to maximize your time spent playing after the flop against weak players and weak hands and minimize it against strong players and strong hands.

[/ QUOTE ]

All I want to do is put myself in a position to win. With the KTs example, if I can beat the guy heads up and I can probably get heads up, then I'll try to get heads up with him. If I can't, I won't.

Making lists of all the possible considerations is a waste of time. You should definitely take the time to think about what might be on such a list (imagine all sorts of playing styles for you villains, and think about what aspects of their game you can exploit and how it could be done). As it turns out, it's all very straight-forward. Play short-handed hands short-handed and play multi-way hands in multi-way pots. Strong hands do better against aggressive players than weak hands. Speculative hands like free cards, so they like passive players. (Edit: Let me also add that you want to play postflop more often against bad players than good players, regardless of their playing style.) It's all what you would expect it to be if you just spent a few minutes thinking about it.

Now that you've read this, go study your postflop game. It's many many times more important than preflop play.

[Baloosh]

Post of the month.

Excellent content all around.

[Felipe]

[ QUOTE ]
hi

my post isn't intented to be harsh so please don't take it that way.

the short answer is this. if it could be made into a chart, someone would have done it already. it can't be done. that's what the forums function to do.

what you are kindof suggesting is to distill ALL of the nuances of preflop poker play into a chart-like entity. it just can't be done.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here's your chart. A SSH preflop strategy guide (for the super novice intro beginner type) Credit goes to OhGeeTee at 2+2. Thanks OhGeeTee.

Nothing can take the place of reason. And no chart can top SSH. These are guidelines.

[ QUOTE ]
Returning to my example about small suited connectors. SSHE suggests that you play these for one bet from late position. It doesn't suggest that you ever fold small suited connectors if you are the first person to enter a pot from late position

[/ QUOTE ]
This is simply incorrect. From page 53:

"Against few opponents weak speculative hands like 6[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 5[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] and J[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 8[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] may not make enough when they get lucky to make up for all the preflop and flop bets lost when they miss."

That's pretty clearly explained, IMO.

I think as you get more acquainted with the text (through re-readings) you'll be amazed at how much "omitted" stuff is actually in there. I still am.

[FlopMe]

Great post. Thanks for typing all that up and the thought you put into it.

[pokernicus]

Aaron, your post was simply excellent. I feel like I am a better poker player for having read it. Thank you! I really appreciate the time you took to write it (and the other posts in this thread), and also the manner in which you chose to do so.