Preflop play
Preflop action is the first stage of every poker hand. It is the stage where the eventual winner(s) already start to struggle for position and where the building up of the pot odds begins.
If you see good players doing a lot of preflop betting, rest assured, they know exactly what they’re doing. While rookies view the preflop stage of a hand as a necessary, boring and quite useless aspect of the game, good poker players see it as an opportunity to generate value for themselves. In a word, they move onto the offensive from the get-go.
Aggressive preflop play is meant to turn the tide of the game in more ways than one. First of all, it aims to make some people leave dead money in the pot. That alone is a huge gain in pot odds for those who stay in. Furthermore, it’ll make people fold, whether they leave money behind or not. That is a huge push again for those who remain in the hand.
Preflop play is also a stage where you can broadcast the table image you want other players to perceive, and get away with it relatively cheap. If you want them to see you as a loose aggressive fish, you can achieve that by acting aggressive preflop. Naturally, you have to tighten up on the flop radically, but by that stage, you’ll have already made your point.
By giving out the wrong table-image, you’ll create yourself an excellent edge over the opposition.
The different components of successful preflop play can be summed up like this:
- Good starting hand selection
- Good preflop betting strategy
- The ability to properly assess pot odds as well as implied ones, where the situation asks for it.