Learn Poker: Mastering the Preflop Strategy

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Learning the basics of poker is easy; however, mastering it requires extra attention. Playing with proper and well-planned strategies makes making in-game decisions more effortless, and you enjoy a better bottom line. If you wish to excel in poker, a crucial system you must master is your preflop game.

Preflop is the foundation of how the rest of your game flows. It sets the tone for subsequent hands, and taking advantage of it places you in a rewarding position. Furthermore, doing well at the preflop stage simplifies the postflop gameplay.

Mastering the preflop strategy is not difficult, but it certainly requires some learning from poker experts. This text has shed more light on how you can become better at your preflop poker game.

Select your Starting Hand

You must carefully pick the hands to play with and those to hold. For instance, Texas Hold ’em Poker offers some great hands to play. You can play with AA-TT for big pocket pairs, AK, AQ, AJ, and KQ for big-suited connectors, and AK, AQ, AJ and KQ for big connectors.

The combo of these cards offers greater chances of winning video poker games than others. Hence, sticking to the right strategies ultimately rewards you with more advantageous situations after the flop. These are certainly only some of the combinations that work when selecting hands. However, if you are a newbie to video poker and other poker variants, sticking to these big cards is your best bet until you are more familiar with your selected game.

Avoid Limping In

Before the flop, you must decide whether to fold, call or raise. Suppose there is no raise before your action; then a call implies you match the big blind’s size. The act is referred to as “limping in”.

Generally, limping in is not advised, as when entering a pot, it is always best to make a raise and display aggression. When limping in with a hand, it means one of two things. Either the hand you are entering with is sub-standard, or a premium hand is being played weakly.

Hence, as the first to enter the pot, you should always fold, raise, and avoid limping. Limping in is only okay where other players have already done so before you. In such a circumstance, you will have more favorable odds during the flop.

Know the Ideal Bet Sizing

On deciding to enter the pot, you must consider making a raise between 3 to 4 times the big blind’s size. If you make a minimum raise, you are only giving opponents with marginal hands the opportunity to enter cheaply. In the end, doing this can nearly defeat the purpose of a preflop raise.

The point of a preflop raise is limiting the number of players accompanying you in seeing a flop. It is always helpful as making profitable decisions is easy with fewer participants in the pot.

Therefore, it would be best if you always entered with 3 or 4 times the size of the big blind. Likewise, if opponents keep calling raises with marginal hands or others have limped in, you should increase the size of the raise.

When a raise is made before you, you must think fast about your decision. Will you fold, call or raise?

You should fold if you possess a marginal or poor starting hand. On the other hand, with a good starting hand, you can always call. However, if your starting hand is a top one like AA or KK, re-raising is ideal, as it helps fill the pot.

Positional Awareness

Awareness of your hand position is a vital variable in preflop poker. Unfortunately, many players do not take this into consideration. Picking a good position can even be more influential in your gameplay than the strength of your selected cards.

In the preflop betting round, play dynamics slightly differ since the last you act on includes both the small and large blinds. Therefore, it varies from other betting rounds where they’re the first that players act on. However, general principles of position are unchanged since you’ll attempt playing more hands you have position over, compared to where you don’t.

You should avoid playing with so many hands in an early position or within the blinds. This is because acting first in each hand can make things difficult, except you possess a premium hand.

Likewise, exercise extra care when playing blinds. Don’t be pressured to enter more pots just because you already committed money into the pot. It is wiser to let go of marginal hands than to call raises with half holding and end up playing out of position for the remaining hand.