Top 10 Tips for Preflop Play
8 minutes
Last Updated: October 15, 2024
Preflop play is one of the most important aspects of No Limit Texas Hold’em, as the moves you make before the flop set up everything that happens for the rest of the hand.
The value of a solid preflop strategy is immeasurable, and all the best poker players start every hand by playing almost flawlessly during the first betting street.
There are many things to consider when building your preflop strategy, as poker coach Tristan Wade reveals in his detailed guide to preflop play for MyPokerCoaching.com.
These are the top ten preflop tips from one of the best No Limit Texas Hold’em coaches out there that you can quickly adopt and apply in your game to instantly take your game to the next level.
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#1 – Never Limp First
This is a tip you may have heard in the past but maybe didn’t fully adopt just yet. If that’s the case, it’s time you take this tip more seriously and stop limping into pots.
In poker, you should always be opting for aggression instead of passivity, and limping is one of the most passive plays you can make.
Limping represents the act of just calling the value of the big blind when the action is on you before the flop, even though other players in front of you have folded.
Whenever action folds to you in an NLH hand, you should only choose between opening the pot for a raise and folding your cards.
Limping first in is weak and unnecessary, as raising allows you to take control of the pot, represent a strong range of hands, and set up future bets.
Raising between 2x (when the stacks are shallower) and 4x (when the stacks are very deep) will force other players to fold their weak card combos and give you a better chance of winning the pot.
#2 – Attack Weak Players
Tip number two has to do with tip number one. The best players in the world apply maximum pressure on players who limp into pots and exhibit weakness from the start of the hand.
Weak and passive players usually limp their weak to medium-strength hands in the hopes of seeing a cheap flop, which is the perfect opportunity for you to raise it up and isolate them.
You can usually isolate weak players in position with a reasonably wide range and take away the pot on many different boards they don’t connect with.
Players who limp often will usually not defend too much after the flop if they don’t hit very hard, which means you will be able to win the pot even when they make a single pair.
Playing against weak players is much easier than playing against aggressive players, which is exactly why you should always be in the latter category.
#3 – Play More Hands in Position
Position is essential in poker and you should always be looking to play more hands in position than out of position.
Being in position means acting after your opponents in the postflop betting rounds. Holding the dealer button guarantees you absolute position, while other late positions like the cutoff also give you a strong chance of going to the flop in position.
Being in position means you will get to play last, see what your opponents do on every betting street, control the size of the pot, and adjust your actions to theirs.
The more hands you can play in position, the more you will profit! On the other hand, if you play weak cards from bad positions, you will usually end up a loser in the game.
#4 – Know Your Opening Ranges
When you are sitting at the poker table, you don’t want to be guessing what to do in the most basic of situations. You should know which hands you want to open from every position before the action is even on you.
As a general rule of thumb, you can open a strong hand range made up of about 15% of all hands from just about any position.
This range is made up of pocket pairs 66+, any suited Ace, AJ+, any suited Broadway combo, KQo, and K9s.
This is a very tight range that you know you can open in any situation, and you should be looking to expand it as you get closer to the dealer button.
On the button, you can open as many as 50% of all hands, gradually adding more suited connectors, pocket pairs, and other decent hands into your opening range.
#5 – Know Which Hands to Call Preflop
When facing a raise before the flop, you will have to choose between folding, calling, and re-raising, and this can be a tricky choice.
Weak poker players tend to call preflop raises with a wide range of hands, including offsuit connectors, suited gappers, and a variety of other weak holdings, but you should not.
Instead, you should look to build your calling range from hands such as middling pocket pairs, suited connectors, suited Aces, and suited Broadways.
All of these hands have great postflop playability, and calling raises allows you to see the flop and realize your equity without the danger of getting 4-bet.
You should do most of your calling in position, from the cutoff and button and the big blind where you are getting a discount on a call.
#6 – Always 3-Bet Your Strong Hands
This one probably goes without saying, but you should always re-raise before the flop when you have a very strong hand.
Some players tend to slow-play their best hands out of fear of their opponents folding, but this is flawed logic.
Even with the best hands like AA or KK, there is nothing wrong with winning the pot before the flop. In this case, you were usually up against a hand that you would not have won much more money from postflop if you had just called.
On the other hand, slow-playing your big pocket pairs and hands like AK can lead to a disaster if you allow your opponents to stay in the pot with a very wide range.
What’s even more, flat-calling with strong hands can also lead to the big blind coming along for an extra discount, further diminishing your equity in the hand.
Since you are re-raising all your best hands, you should balance this out by adding some hands like A2s, A5s, KJs, KTs, JQs, and similar to your 3-betting range at some frequency.
#7 – Defend Your Big Blind Often
The big blind is the one position where you can get away with calling a lot of hands because you are getting a significant discount.
Especially when facing a min-raise, and especially in games with a big blind ante, you will be getting fantastic odds to call before the flop.
This makes any suited cards, offsuit connectors, and hands like Ax great candidates to call the preflop raise with, as the price simply can’t be beaten.
Be mindful of calling too much preflop when the action goes multiway, as hands like K6 or 54 don’t do particularly well against multiple opponents.
#8 – Adjust Versus Multiple Opponents
When making your preflop decisions, you should always be aware of the number of players who will see the flop.
Ideally, you want to go to the flop heads-up, and if this is not the case, you should usually not get too involved unless you have good cards.
The extra dead money in the pot can lead some players to play many hands multi-way, but the truth is most marginal hands don’t play well against more than one opponent.
For instance, if you have A9 before the flop, going up against two or three players is not a good idea, even if the pot odds are great.
More often than not, you will flop a pair only to lose additional money to a better top pair, two pair, or an overpair, while you will only rarely win a big pot in a spot like this.
#9 – Master Preflop Raise Sizes
Bet sizing is always essential, starting with how you size up your preflop raises. Fortunately, mastering this aspect of the game should not be too difficult.
When raising first in, you should usually lean towards smaller raises (2x to 2.5x) if the stacks are shallow while going bigger when the stacks get deeper.
A 3x raise is usually warranted as the effective stack gets over 60 big blinds, while you may even want to raise to 4x or more when the stacks are very deep (200 big blinds).
If you are facing a raise and want to 3-bet, you should be looking to 3-bet smaller in position than out of position.
In position, you can aim for 2.5x to 3.5x the original raise, depending on stack sizes. Out of position, 3x to 4.5x the original raise works well if the stacks are deep enough so as not to commit you to the pot.
You should be looking to win more pots outright when 3-betting out of position, which is why a bigger raise size makes sense.
#10 – Think in Terms of Hand Ranges
Perhaps the most difficult tip for poker beginners is to think in terms of hand ranges instead of specific poker hands.
When thinking about what your opponent’s holdings might be, you should always be thinking about all the possible hands they can have (their hand range), instead of trying to pinpoint an exact hand they have.
The truth is there is no way to tell the exact two cards your opponent has, but you can have a pretty good idea of the range of hands they are playing with in most cases.
Keep in mind that recreational poker players tend to have wider ranges across the board, while more serious players have more condensed and balanced hand ranges.