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Structured Decision-Making Preflop in Shorthanded No Limit

Note: While the title suggests that this article is exclusively about shorthanded No Limit, the concepts addressed actually apply to all forms of the game, including full ring and even tournament play. Since shorthanded play is my primary game, the following content will sometimes be most applicable to that form, but the article should still be generally useful to all no limit players.

One of the quickest ways to improve your expectation in No Limit Hold’em is to take a serious look at your preflop decisions. The folds, calls and raises you make at this stage inform every other decision you make throughout the rest of the hand, and a small leak preflop can easily explode into a cavernous hole on later streets.

The obvious way to analyze your preflop decisions is to break down starting hands into various groups (pocket pairs, suited connecters, etc) and map out what you tend to do with each group. You might find that you’re limping too early too often with small connectors and getting punished with raises behind that you can’t [or shouldn’t] call. If you have a program like Poker Tracker and a bunch of hand histories, you can take this approach one step further and pore over a report that breaks down the performance of every starting hand from every position. This would probably yield some interesting results as well – you might find that you’re better off limping with AQs-A10 than raising with them.

While both of those approaches are useful for plugging leaks, they don’t really solve the core problem with your game so much as mask it. Poor preflop decisions are the result of a deeper flaw in your thinking about poker – overplaying KJ in middle position, for instance, reflects a more than a misunderstanding about how good of a hand KJ is. It also reflects a basic misunderstanding of the importance of position, the probability of superior hands being distributed to those players still to act, and so on. To put it simply, looking only to your results to improve your game is a bit like noticing that your bedroom floor is covered with rusty nails and heading for Walgreens to stock up on Band Aids and Neosporin.

The truth is, most preflop mistakes can be cleared up with a little structured investigation into your decision-making process (if you like quick tips like that, check out our Daily Poker Tips page). Basically, we want to stop asking what hands you play in a given position and start taking a closer look at why you would want to play hands in a given situation. For too many players, this line of thought begins and ends with a static evaluation of how ‘good’ a hand is. Ask a typical player why they folded Q8o to a preflop raise and they’ll likely say something along the lines of: “It’s a terrible hand.” They may be right, but that doesn’t make them correct. A better player might say something like “The raiser is a pretty tight player so I put them on an over pair, plus with so many people behind I just didn’t feel like taking a shot with that hand.” An even better player might reference all of those factors plus their image at the table and recent confrontations between themselves and the raiser. Point is, the better a player is, the more aware they are that the value of a hand has something to do with the ink on the cards, but a whole lot more to do with the total environment of the table ( and also in extra values like bonuses and poker tournaments overlay). It’s just like diamonds – diamonds aren’t valuable because of any intrinsic worth [like, say, oil is]; diamonds are valuable because of perceived scarcity, because of cultural significance, and because of clever PR and market manipulation by DeBeers to name a few factors.

Now our task should be a little clearer – we don’t need to develop a rigid chart of hands we should or should not value [although such an approach works just fine for limit]. What we need is a system for assessing the value of any given hand at any given point. Luckily, it’s a fairly easy system to articulate and implement. The toughest part of the whole deal is actually realizing that you need such a system in the first place. Consider this basic list of questions you should probably ask yourself when deciding how to act when facing a preflop raise. Even a general answer to each will give you a much stronger sense of how to correctly proceed in any given scenario:

1. What does a preflop raise from this player mean?
2. How strong is my hand?
3. What kind of direct odds am I getting?
4. What kind of implied odds am I getting?
5. How many players are still left to act behind me?
6. How strong will my position for the rest of the hand be?

You can probably run down that list in about 10 seconds flat once you’ve gone through it a few times. Eventually, you’ll consider all of those factors as a matter of habit, but try [assuming you’re playing online] talking them through out loud for the first few sessions. Do it even when you’re in a situation that you consider an auto-call or auto-fold. It will help to train you and you’ll probably be surprised at how much that simple exercise will teach you about how you approach poker. Too simple for you, Captain I’m A Pro? Start breaking down individual items into sub-trees. For example:

What kind of implied odds am I getting?

1. How deep are our stacks relative to the bet?
2. Is my call likely to motivate additional calls behind? How many?
3. Does the raiser always continuation bet? Sometimes? Rarely?
4. Does the raiser typically overcharge or undercharge draws when they hit a hand?
5. Can the raiser lay a hand down when the obvious draw makes?

Another benefit of asking these types of questions before every preflop action is that it sharpens your sense of the table and your place within it. For example, if the action gets to you without a raise, here’s a quick drilldown of relevant factors that should inform your play:

1. How strong is my hand?
2. What’s my goal with this kind of hand – to steal, to build a pot, to trap, or to isolate a single opponent?
3. What kind of direct / implied odds am I getting?
4. What kind of impact will my play here have on my image as a whole?

You might find after a session or two that you’re rarely answering the second question with “to steal” – indicating that you’re not mixing up your preflop game enough and possibly missing out on some value with your big hands. Or maybe you’re answering “to steal” way too often, meaning that you’re sticking your neck out far more than necessary to generate the kind of action you need for optimal play. Either way, the forced reflection – a process you have to go through even before hands where it seems completely unnecessary – gives you a much more realistic picture of how your opponents are likely to act, how they probably view you, and how you should act as a result.

Notice my use of bold above. I don’t just toss out boldings for my health. I know people are reading this and thinking “Yeah, yeah, I can see how that is a useful list if I have Q 10 o and I’m contemplating calling a minimum raise, but I’m not going to waste my time asking all of those questions when I have 8 3o in the BB and UTG goes all in for 220x the BB.” Do me a favor, don’t be one of those people. If you are, you’re missing the point of this article entirely. The point is to identify and ingrain a process, a way of thinking, and the best way to do that is through repetitive application. The only way you’re going to be able to process more nuanced questions is if the basic ones become second nature. For example, here’s a quick list of factors to consider before you try to steal an unraised pot preflop:

1. Who already limped and why?
2. Is there a short stack still to act behind you?
3. How loose are the blinds?
4. Is someone behind you likely to be on tilt from a recent hand?
5. How conservative / loose is your image?
6. How good is your position likely to be if you get called?
7. What kind of hand are you likely to be facing if you get called?

At most online sites, you simply don’t have enough time to accurately answer the first few items, let alone the whole list [and you could probably add another 10 items to the list before you started getting ridiculous] – and this list is on top of the initial question or two you had to answer to even get to the point where you decided to steal. The only way you can hope to process this much information is to make it a habit. Additionally, you’ll find out pretty quickly that asking some questions naturally leads you to ask more questions – so the repetition not only helps you to internalize the decision tree, but it is in fact is critical to building a quality tree in the first place.

Don’t let the simplicity of the approach fool you – this type of structured decision making is a powerful and scalable tool that can completely change your game if you let it. Will you feel a little silly talking out loud to yourself? Sure. Get over it. Will it seem inane to drill down a list of 15 reasons why you’re folding 73o UTG? You bet. Will you often be asking yourself questions you don’t have great answers for? Absolutely – and that’s the whole point, in many ways. Bad habits are often the result of unasked, not unanswered, questions – so start forcing yourself to consider the tough questions you’ve been ignoring. Unless, that is, you really have a thing for band-aids and Neosporin.

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