1. Poker Strategy Before The Flop Flip
2. Poker Strategy Before The Flop Season
3. Poker Strategy Before The Flop End

Before the flop is where it all starts, where you are forced to make your first important decision depending on all of the variables involved with the hand. It is important to make good, solid decisions before the flop, as it will form the foundations for how the rest of the hand will be played out. Sep 04, 2020 In full-ring No-Limit Hold'em, deciding which hands to play and which hands to fold is the single most important factor when you first learn to play winning poker. You may only be making flop, turn and river decisions once or twice an orbit but you will be making pre-flop decisions every single hand. Although live poker players tend to be looser when compared to online poker players when it comes to pre-flop calls, things tend to go quite differently during post-flop. You will notice that online poker players are more likely to make huge post-flop calls, with a weak or medium strength hand, than a live poker player.

If you are a newbie to the game of Texas Holdem, you might be asking yourself why you should raise before the flop? It’s an important question to ask yourself, since there is significance to betting and raising in poker, which will inevitable have an impact on your win rate.

By knowing when to raise before seeing the flop, and knowing what you are trying to accomplish, it will be much easier to determine when you should be raising. So these are some of the main arguments in favor of raising pre flop.

Making a Raise for value

First and foremost, you should want to raise before the flop to get more value with your premium hands. This is a fundamental poker concept that should explain itself. If you think you have the best hand before the flop you want to try and build a bigger pot before you even see the flop, turn, and river.

Let’s say you hold a hand like TT+, AQ+. These are premium hands that you can be dealt pre flop and it’s extremely likely you have the best hand before the community cards have been dealt. So your goal is to raise before the flop to build a bigger pot so that you don’t give speculative hands a chance to just call and suck out on you.

Even when you are dealt AA and the best hand pre flop, you are the 80% favorite versus any other hands in holdem. Statistically, however, the value of the hand goes down drastically when there is more then one other caller seeing the flop. By raising with your big hands, it shows you have a strong hand, so fewer players are willing to call, giving yourself the best possible chance to win the hand against a weaker holding.

Raising to isolate weaker players

This is known as the isolation raise in no limit texas holdem. Generally hands that you would be raising from that position at the table are good enough to try and isolate with. If you have spotted a weaker player(s) at the table, then it will be profitable to isolate with a wider range against them, especially if they have a tendency to check/fold the flop a lot.

Usually the best time to raise to isolate an opponent is when a weaker player enters the pot by limping in. By raising a player who has already limped into the pot, you give yourself the opportunity to play against them in a heads-up pot. Raising for isolation can be hugely profitable, because weaker players tend to limp/call with too many hands, so when you have a made hand, you can just value bet them and win their stack.

Weaker players also tend to play in a very straightforward manner on the flop and on later streets. If they miss the flop, they will fold, or call when they catch a piece of the board. Because they are limp calling with such a wide range, they will be check folding the flop a good percentage of the time, so even when you miss the flop, a continuation bet will take down the pot most of the time. You have the advantage of continuation betting as a bluff because of your aggressive pre flop strategy.

Raising with the goal of stealing the blinds

Although the general pre flop strategy is to raise for value and isolate weaker players with your premium hands, another tactic worth exploring is the concept of stealing the blinds. Even though the opportunity doesn’t always present itself in loose/passive full ring poker games, sometimes the action will fold around to you in late position.

If you were in the cutoff or in the button and this happens, you never want to just call to see the flop, you should be looking to steal the blinds. Even if you do happen to get called, you get to act last post flop, giving you an inherent advantage over the other players. However, when playing against tighter players in the blinds, the raise in late position will take down the pot a lot of the time. Although it’s preferable to steal the blinds on the button, if the player on the button is passive, then it becomes more appealing to blind steal in the cutoff.

Raising with the goal of deception

This play is another strategy that can be incorporated into your poker game when playing against tougher opponents, although it’s not really required when playing against weaker players who will pay you off regardless. In tougher games, raising weaker hands such as T9s in early position to create an element of deception becomes more appealing because thinking players will be assigning you hand ranges of what hands they expect you to realistically raise from that position.

If you are playing hands they wouldn’t expect you to be playing, then they can’t play the hand optimally against you, so when the other player calls and makes a big hand on the flop, you will likely win all your opposition's chips when they have a decent hand, since they will not be putting you on that hand.

In summary, it becomes easier to know when to raise before the flop, when you have a purpose of what you’re hoping to achieve.

So….You now know about position - But how should you play pre-flop and what factors should you consider? Let’s get down to some basic strategy. We are going to think about which starting hands you should be playing.

It Depends…..

The first concept to understand is that the hands you should be playing, really depend on a variety of ever-changing factors. Factors such as:

1. Your position at the table.
2. Who your opponents are. ( How are they feeling today?)
3. What happened before you. (Did everyone fold? Or was there some action?)
4. How big your stack is.

Remember, it's not simply a case of selecting all of the top hands and expecting to profit. If it were that simple, everyone would be making tons of money.

Position

Position is very important in helping you decide which starting hands to play. But what do we mean by position?

Take a look at this 6max table:

We can see that our position on the table is determined by the location of the dealer button. Traditionally, the player with the dealer button would be the player who dealt the cards. In casinos today there will usually be a designated dealer who does not take part in the action. Even so, one player will still be assigned the dealer button which moves to the left after every round.

To the left of the button (BU) we have:

SB (Small-blind)

BB (Big-blind)

Followed by:

UTG (under-the-gun)

MP (middle-position. Sometimes referred to as “the Hijack”)

CO (cut-off) immediately to the right of BU (button)

In every pre-flop round, UTG will be the first to act. After the flop the player in the SB will be first to act assuming he didn’t fold already.

Try to play in position

• Acting first in poker is a big disadvantage and is referred to as being “out-of-position”. We give away information about our hand – our opponent gets to see what we do before he acts. As a result we should –
• Only play stronger hands when it is likely we will be “out-of-position” postflop.
• Take a look at this familiar starting hands chart and see how the suggested starting-hands vary by position.

Previous Action

Here are some possible scenarios that take place before our turn to act:

1. Everyone Folds
2. Someone Raises
3. One or more players limp (Limping is when you just call preflop rather than raise)

Assuming everyone folds, it is down to you to put in the first raise, known as “open-raising”. It is recommended that if you want to play a hand that you always start by raising. Many players instinctively feel as if they should “open-limp” but in reality it will be harder to play profitably this way. One reason is that every time you raise, you will have a shot at taking down the pot-preflop when everyone folds. If you open-limp you are giving your opponents a free/cheap chance to see a flop and make a better hand than you.

How big should you raise? Anywhere between 3 big-blinds and 4 big-blinds will likely be fine. In late position, such as the Button you can sometimes profitably open-raise to 2.5bb or 2bb, while in early position or with strong hands you might choose to raise to 5bb.

Assuming one or more players limp, it will still be a good idea to put in a raise. There are some situations where it is ok to limp behind, with small pocket-pairs for example, but generally you should just raise. Raising against a limper is known as an “isolation raise”, or iso-raise for short. This is because a likely outcome is that the other players fold, and the originally limper calls – so you’ve “isolated” yourself in a heads-up pot against the player. This can be a very profitable thing to do, especially if the limper is a weak player and you will also be in-position postflop.

Poker Strategy Before The Flop Flip

How big should you raise? A similar size to when you are the open-raiser, but add 1bb for every limper. For example, there are 2 limpers before you, and you are on the button where you normally like to raise to 3bb. Now you will raise to 3bb + 1bb + 1bb, for a total of 5bb.

Assuming someone open-raises you have 2 options. You can either re-raise (known as a “3bet”), or you can flat call. With your strong value hands you should be 3betting, while the rest you should be flat-calling with, or folding if they are not strong enough to call with.

How big should you raise? Around 3 times the initial open raise size, or perhaps a little over. For example, someone open-raises to 3bb – you wake up with pocket-Aces and 3bet to 10bb.

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Other Factors

The Starting Hands Chart is provided as very rough guide for getting started – it is not a long term strategy you should be following. Within a few weeks (depending on how much you play), you should be deciding for yourself which hands to play – and ideally making a decent amount of variations from the SH chart.

One factor you will find that makes a big difference is the specific stack-sizes going into a hand. Players intentionally buy in with different amounts of chips knowing it will effect which hands they will play.

For example some common stack sizes:

20-40bb Short-Stack Strategy

50bb Mid-Stack Strategy

Poker Strategy Before The Flop Season

100bb Big-Stack Strategy

200bb Deep-Stack Strategy

It’s useful to know how to play with any of these stack sizes. Even if you buy in with 100bb you will face opponents who only have 20bb some of the time, and you will want to adjust your strategy accordingly. It is recommended you learn to play poker with 100bb stacks – big-stack strategy is the most common strategy followed at the tables currently.

Poker Strategy Before The Flop End

One final thing to look out for is the other players at the table. If some players who are still to act behind you are especially aggressive you might want to open-raise less. On the other hand, if those players are very tight and folding a lot you can consider open-raising more.

Learn more about playing before the flop in this poker coaching video.