Winning Preflop Strategy in Texas Holdem
Sunday, January 11th, 2009The style of the players in the game should always help determine your strategy. For instance, suppose you have a wild player 3 seat to the left of the poker table. If your turn is before him throw away your weaker hands. Anything that isn’t a big pair means a weaker hand! He or she will probably raise and there may be a re-raise before it gets back to you. However if he acts before you then you can assess the situation and can probably call a single raise even with the draw hands (65s, 33 etc) assuming there are several callers. Always keep in mind your drawing averages and your pot odds, though — even pre-flop. And they had better be decent drawing hands.
The key is that the stronger the absolute value of your hand the more you want to get chips in the pot pre-flop. Where as, with the draw hands, you want to see the flop as cheaply as possible and do your betting on the flop if you hit. Sometimes a raise before the flop can keep people from raising after the flop, in essence buying you a free card. Free, except for the price of a poker chip, that is.