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Holdem Lesson
2: Before the Flop
DON'T
CALL RAISES BEFORE THE FLOP
This
is a huge mistake that most unaware players make time and time again.
In fact, calling a raise 'cold' (calling two bets before it has been
your turn) is such a huge money-loser that it warrants an entire
lesson in and of itself. As outlined in Lesson #1, there are very
few hands that realize a long-term profit in hold 'em. Following
this logic, there are even fewer that show a profit after someone
has raised.
The
reasoning behind this is easy to understand. There are plenty of
players who will raise with a wide variety of hands (if you have
played on-line poker before you are likely to have noticed this);
however, the ‘typical’player, when raising before
the flop, will often hold either pocket aces, kings, queens or jacks,
AK (suited or offsuit) or AQ (usually suited). Given this small range
of hands, you only want to play those hands which play well, and
are not 'dominated', by the hands within his 'raising range'.
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Pretend
you have KQ offsuit, for example. Usually, this is an okay hand to
play. But it plays horribly against the typical player's raising
hands. If your opponent has pocket aces, you would need to catch
both a queen and a king. If your opponent has pocket kings,
you would need to catch two queens. When you're up against
either AK or AQ, we're back to the example illustrated at the beginning
of Lesson #1 with the AT vs. the AJ. To make the situation worse,
when you flop the second best hand you'll often end up paying through
the nose, since a) you'll think you have the best hand when in fact
you don't, and b) your hand will usually have less than a 20% chance
of improving to a winner. As you can see, a lot of things have
to go right for you to drag the pot when you're up against a player
with a high-quality starting hand. For obvious reasons, this is not
the spot you want to be in.
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If
we're in a 'typical' low limit game, and an early-position player
raises and we call, you can usually pencil us in for one of three
hands; either AQ suited, AJ suited, or KQ suited. Often we'll fold
these hands as well if our opponent is a good player. With almost
any other hand we’ll either fold or reraise. The exception
to this rule occurs when you can anticipate a lot of other players
calling the raise; then we'll mix in some of the small pocket pairs
and larger suited connectors and hope to catch a flop. Otherwise,
we're done with the hand.
Note-
it is rarely correct to fold if you've already called, and an opponent
AFTER you raises. What we're discussing here is the practice of calling
a raise 'cold', i.e, calling two bets before you've had a chance
to call the first bet.
Lessons
and quizzes courtesy of
Netbettor.com
- the online poker source for advantage players
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