The importance of preflop

[sweetjazz]

I think that the importance of preflop play is often understated here. As I move up in limits, I see more and more players who postflop play is decent (or at least not god awful). But their hand selection is horrible. It's clear that our potential profit goes up as our opponents play more and more hands. Here's why I think the importance of preflop is understated:

* The most important part of making good preflop decisions is that you want to avoid making compounding errors. Playing marginal hands leads to a lot of tough decisions. Sometimes we can't avoid them. But tough decisions tend to drain EV from hands; sometimes there is still enough EV to make them worthwhile even so, but often the EV just drips away. A lot of people don't play well postflop and each time they play a marginal hand preflop, they simply can't profit enough with that hand and their postflop ability. Others are good or even very good postflop, but play hands that just aren't profitable in the game they are playing. Nobody can turn 95o UTG in a 6max game into a winner, assuming the other players are as loose as they, in fact, are. (There's a good argument to be made for learning while playing slightly -EV hands and I agree -- but there should come a point where you know enough plus can learn from your profitable hands so that it's more +EV to fold losing hands than to keep playing them hoping you will figure something new out.)

* It's psychologically easier for good players to consistently make -EV plays preflop. Many players who constantly work on their postflop game refuse to believe that certain hands in certain situations are unprofitable.

* But the main reason why preflop is so important is because you have to really understand postflop play very well to become really good at preflop play. The only way you can make consistently good decisions preflop is to know your opponents' hand ranges in various situations to a fairly accurate degree, to understand their betting tendancies, and the value of your hand and position relative to what has happened so far and what might actions the people on your left might take. In essence, you need to understand all of what might develop in the hand and how your hand will do on average in these situations. Of course, no mind can do this with precision, but the better players make better judgments consistently. Only if have you a plan for what will happen if your 87s flops middle pair (among other things) can you assess whether the hand is playable in a given situation. Of course, you're usually thinking of a representative flop, and what you do on a Jh 8c 3s flop will be very different that what you do on a Ad 8d 6d flop (when you're holding 8s 7s, say).

In this respect, playing preflop requires a higher level of analysis than playing postflop. Preflop play requires you to average a rough postflop analysis over the range of possible flop (or, in practice, to have rough plans for some represenative flops and a rough idea of how often the flop will look like each representative).

I am not saying that the boards should be cluttered with preflop questions, and I am not saying that studying postflop play isn't important. For a beginning player, it's important to learn basic starting hand guidelines (e.g. Ed Miller's charts) and then concentrate on postflop play.

But in my humble opinion, a player who aspires to be a top player must, while continually learning and improving his postflop play, must revisit preflop play and start to understand how to make expert preflop decisions. Because in order to make expert preflop decisions, you have to have a really good understanding of postflop play.

Okay, that is all I wanted to say.

[donger]

agreed, nice post.

[Lash]

I agree with you. PF play is understated here, but that's because most posters here feel that they have a relatively solid pf strategy dialed in. Whether they actually do or not is up for debate... myself included of course.

Plus there is so much published on pf play - starting hand charts / groups etc. that it's a little easier to get solid quality information on pre flop play.

If you are continually finding yourself confused on the flop, then pre-flop is probably where you should be looking. Personally I feel I have moved past that stage to the point where I need to start looking at flop play. So that's what I'm focusing on.

My late night 2 cents anyway... good luck

[Matt Jenko]

Timely post. Thanks.

[jason_t]

Often when I read a post by you I think to myself that I wish you would post more. Nice work again.

[baronzeus]

great post. agree 100%