In 2015, I released one in all my most well liked books, The Course: Serious Hold ’Em Strategy For Smart Players. It’s a step-by-step guide to mastering the live no-limit hold’em games that you're going to find in most cardrooms all over the world. The book starts with a very powerful skills you want to beat $1-$2. Then it moves onto the more advanced skills you’ll need for $2-$5 and eventually $5-$10 games. With just what’s within the book, you'll be able to discover ways to win in most home games and live games in cardrooms.

In this and upcoming articles, I’ll recap probably the most high points from the book. The remainder of this newsletter is tailored from one of the most preflop advice within the $1-$2 section.

When you’re evaluating your preflop strategy, sometimes it may be easy to get side-tracked. It’s easy to come back up with some rationalization for almost any preflop play. Three-bet with 8-5? Sure. You thought your opponent would fold. Called an early raise with K-9 offsuit? Yeah, why not. You thought the raiser was a nasty player that you may outplay.

Without some basic, bedrock preflop principles, nearly any play could appear to make sense. To offer protection to you from the worst of that kind of thinking, I LIKE TO RECOMMEND you run your preflop ideas past a strategic checklist. Your preflop plays should, a few of the time, check these boxes. In the event that they do, chances are high that your play was fine. In the event that they don’t, you ought to strongly review the play.

Principle 1. Play Tight.

You can alter the mixes of hands you play—sometimes favoring suited connectors and other times favoring offsuit big cards, for instance—but don’t stray too removed from basic frequencies. If you’re out of position, play about 15 percent of your hands. If you’re at the button, play about 35 percent. Within the cutoff and lowjack, you'll choose frequencies between these numbers.

The problem with playing way too many hands is that you're far too often caught with junk after the flop. In today’s game, unless you play extremely well, it’s hard to conquer this disadvantage.

Principle 2. Avoid Strength.

Your $1-$2 opponents gives you far an excessive amount of details about their hand strength, and that information begins with preflop play. If someone rarely raises, but they raise this hand, assume they're strong and react accordingly.

One of the large mistakes $1-$2 players make is that they don’t take their opponent’s preflop raises and especially reraises seriously enough. I don’t know the way repeatedly I’ve seen someone repay A-K on a king-high flop with K-10 or K-9. You can’t avoid this outcome completely, but when you might be attuned on your opponents’ strength signals, you're going to avoid it in situations others don’t.

Principle 3. Attack Weakness.

This is the flipside to Principle 2. Your opponents play too many hands preflop. This tendency forms the bottom of why you'll be able to win money at this game. Whilst you suspect your opponents are in with weak hands, you would like to attack them with raises.

While I’ve written recently about some situations where limping is good, more often than not you must build nice, big pots preflop. The larger the pots you build, the more you win when things go your way. And if you’re fidgeting with an edge—like you may be when your opponents are weak preflop—you will win greater than you lose.

So be aggressive when your opponents don’t tag themselves with strength preflop.

Principle 4. Don’t Attempt to Make Hands.

Making trips and straights and flushes isn't the way you win. In the event you think, “Gee, maybe I WILL slip in with this suited hand and catch a flush,” you're thinking like everyone else. In the event you think like everyone else, you're going to play like everyone else, and you'll lose the table rake—about $10 an hour. In case your opponents are limping, they’re probably weak, and also you should probably attack them with a raise—even in case your hand isn’t so great either.

If you're playing a hand thinking “This is a superb play because if I miss, I WILL break out from it,” you're probably thinking wrong. That is losing logic—it’s right there within the second half. If the most productive thing you'll be able to say a couple of hand is that you just understand how to fold it, you’re not really going to win over the longterm with it.

You must be playing hands since you think you'll be able to win pots with them. Sometimes you’ll win the pot by creating a big hand, but usually you'll win either with a medium-strength hand or with a bluff.

Play hands that may win in lots of different scenarios.

Principle 5. Choose Hands That experience Equity-When-Called.

A hand like 8-7 suited is healthier on this game than a hand like A-4 off. (THAT IS true with typical cash game stack sizes. In tournaments with short stacks, it’s potentially a distinct story.) The actual value of 8-7 suited is that it hits quite a lot of flops, ensuring that you simply often have equity. A hand like this may occasionally be one in all your best bluffing options. Whereas on flops that don’t contain an ace, A-4 off could be mostly useless.

If you're thinking that it is possible for you to to play aggressively on a variety of flops and switch cards, it’s an excellent sign you've gotten a hand worth playing.

Principle 6. Defend Blinds Against Steals, Not Strong Raises.

This is another one that’s vitally important at $1-$2. It’s basically a restatement of Principles 2 and 3, but for when you’re within the blinds. Many players feel obligated to play hands from the blinds as a result of direct pot odds you get. But if the stacks are relatively deep, as and so they are in cash games, the immediate odds aren’t as important as how the hand will play after the flop.

When your opponent makes a large raise that’s prone to be a powerful hand, don’t worry about defending your blind. You're getting good pot odds, but unless you've gotten a hand like 4-4 that’s good for taking down strong hands, you’ll have an uphill battle at the post-flop play.

On the opposite hand, when your opponent makes a raise that’s more likely to be a steal, defend with a number of reraises and calls. You don’t want opponents to run over your blinds once they have junk. Even though your blind hand is just a little junky, you'll be able to usually win a junk-versus-junk battle should you plan for it.

Avoid strength. Attack weakness.

Final Thoughts

Good preflop play is necessary, but not sufficient, to win at live no-limit hold’em. For essentially the most part, a great preflop strategy will earn you a couple of bucks here and there, but mostly it is going to set you as much as create bigger edges later in hands.

My book, The Course, covers a couple of specific strategies to create these tangible post-flop edges. I WILL BE ABLE TO introduce some of them in upcoming articles. ♠

Ed’s newest book, Poker’s 1%: The only Big Secret That Keeps Elite Players On Top is accessible now at his website edmillerpoker.com. You may also find original articles and instructional videos by Ed on the up to date site redchippoker.com.

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