Limit Holdem: Making Fewer Mistakes Part 1 (Starting Hands)

In poker it's not so much about being great. It's more about sucking less

In many sports your goal is to be stronger, faster, tougher, whatever than your opponents.  A runner wants to run fastest, a jumper wants to jump highest, a poker player, however, just wants to suck less.  In this case “sucking less” means they want to make fewer mistakes than their opponents and they want to find opponents who make more (and worse!) mistakes than they do.  It also means that when they do make mistakes they want to minimize the consequences of those mistakes and when their opponents make mistakes they want to take full advantage of them.

Typical Low Stakes Poker Starting Hand Mistakes

Here are a few of the most common starting hand mistakes you can make in a low limit game:

• Playing implied odds starting cards (also called multiway hands like JTs) either out of position or when you aren’t in a multiway hand
  
  

  Hole Cards

  Hole Cards

  Hole Cards

• Playing easily dominated and/or small cards out of position like KJ, QJ, etc. when you are in a non-multiway hand (against one or two opponents)
  
  

  Hole Cards

  Hole Cards

  Hole Cards

• Playing unsuited garbage hands like K5o, A3o, J4o
  
  

  Hole Cards

  Hole Cards

  Hole Cards

When your opponent makes these mistakes they automatically pay a price for them.  For example when they play a hand like 56s against one or two opponents they won’t hit their hand often enough to make money in the long run.  In addition when they do have a draw the pot odds and implied odds will be much tighter because there are fewer people in the pot.

Besides the automatic price your opponent is paying you should take advantage of their mistakes and increase the severity of their errors:

• The first way to maximize your opponent’s mistakes when they have a poor starting hand selection is to always raise your premium hands preflop when they come into a pot before you.  If they are likely to raise with their dominated hands then you should usually be willing to re-raise them pre-flop with AK-AJ, KQ and any pocket pairs you deem at least two notches higher than their minimum requirement for coming into the pot. If they will come in and raise with pocket 7's the you should re-raise if you have pocket 9's or better (and fold otherwise). If they limp into a pot with suited connectors or other implied-odds hands and if you have a hand that is powerful against few opponets like AK or TT then you should always raise them if raising will reduce the number of opponents preflop. At some no foldem holdem tables you won't be able to reduce the number of opponents and may need to just call.
• If your opponent plays easily dominated or garbage hands, then be more willing to bet your top pair top kicker hands like AK, AQ, AJ (flopping a K, Q, or J respectively) aggressively on the flop, turn and river.  Always value bet the river unless your opponent has shown extra strength on the turn.  Sometimes you will have to fold to a river or turn raise with these hands (100% vs. an opponent who isn’t generally capable of a river-raise bluff).
• In addition, when playing a hand like AK your opponents will often call gutshot draws on a board like AQx when they hold KJ or KT even when there aren’t many people in the pot.  Take advantage of this through value bets on all streets, but also be aware of their betting tendencies when a third Broadway card hits and they raise as you’ll often have to fold a one pair hand here against many opponents who, when raising the turn, are representing at least two pair.

Avoiding Starting Hand Mistakes

• As a general rule, raise your premium hands before the flop.  Don’t be afraid to three-bet with hands like AK, TT+ AQs and three-bet with even worse holdings against someone who often raises with poor cards.  It’s tempting to wait and see a flop with AK, but at most online tables today it is a mistake—raise!  One exception to this rule is if there is a maniac player to your left in which case you can sometimes limp and re-raise with your best hands.
• Don’t come into the pot with a multiway hand like QJs, 65s, 55 unless you are relatively sure there will be five or more opponents seeing the flop.  These hands are best against a lot of opponents when you are in late position.
• I recommend avoiding small and medium pairs when facing 1-3 opponents.  While it’s true that 66 has a slight edge over AK heads up it will often be difficult to get more than a single bet per betting round when you win and you’ll often be facing tough decisions where you may end up folding the best hand or paying extra bets with the worst hand.  Obviously this is a situation you want to avoid.  Usually you have to flop a set or some sort of a combo draw (like a board of 3 4 5 when you hold 66) when you have a small/medium pair.  The exception to this rule is when you are up against an opponent who plays and raises will all pairs in which case you should be willing to play pairs as small as 77 heads up against them.

Review your play

After you’re done with a session, pull your hand history into a hand replayer like Popopop’s excellent (and FREE) hand replayer and look at the hands you were involved in.  Notice the starting hand mistakes you and your opponents made and also see situations where your opponents loose hand requirements caused you to lose more money than you should have when they made two weird pair or a gutshot straight draw.  See what you can do to mitigate those situations and also get more money in the pot when you have the best of it.

Until next time, keep flopping quads