If you think of an opponent's hand range who plays 30% of all hands and you start with the top 10%, on the flop you can simply continue 100% of the time. If opponent waits for the top 1/3rd of his range given his starting hand and the flop, he will be folding 2/3rds of the time and even when he calls his range won't be significantly ahead of yours. In other words, your opponent has to be significantly tighter after the flop when up against someone who is tight preflop. As a result they are much more likely to make a mistake. Additionally, if opponent calls a half pot bet 2/3rds of the tim to keep you breaking even on your bluffs as he is technically supposed to, he is giving you tremendous value with your range In other words, regardless of how he acts after the flop it is probably going to be wrong because you play tight to start the hand. If he is too tight, you recognize it and can widen your raising hnd after the flop and get real aggressive.
Playing very tight preflop and even continuing with tight on the flop can still be a very winning style if you are at the right tables that are loose enough and you can prevent giving opponent too good of implied odds, OR you get the same value out of hands when opponents have a worse hand and are not on draw as you give up in implied odds when opponent does hit. For example, putting 3 half pot sized bets in the pot on each street vs doing the same if opponent hits his draw hand on the river is okay, while calling a massive all in overbet when a scare card hits is not.
The main reason is that it provides a very good margin of safety if you get overzealous with your bluffs as your opponent still has to play against your ENTIRE range. In other words, if he calls you down he could end up being against aces the next time. Even if you might make a mistake on a particular hand, the overall strategy of continuing aggressively is usually very good.
Since betting gets geometrically bigger on each street many think the way to play is start very weak and fold a lot unless you have a big draw. The problem is sometimes opponent has a better draw and you hit your draw and it is no good on top of the fact that when you don't have a draw you will be getting a strategy that is wide open towards being robbed blind on the flop. Additionally, without good cards to start with it is a lot easier to make very big mistakes which become exponentially worse. By starting strong only continuing when you flop strong minus a few continuation bets and check raise bluffs or 3bet bluffs (especially on draws or semibluffs), you may pay your fair share of blinds and take some bad beats, but you also should get your fair share of small pots where opponent gives up his chance of drawing out or even folds the best hand. Overall this will bide your time and keep you around break even. THEN when you can continue because you got there on the turn after bluff failed OR you started real strong, your occasional monster big pot in addition to your small pots that you likely win as a result will far exceed any previous losses.
Well as many of you know by now, I am usually not a fan of playing so patiently ON the flop unless my opponents give me a reason to and I believe in potentially playing any two to exploit the right opponents in the right situation or at least a much wider range of hands.
As a general "core" strategy I believe you should in worst case scenario start only with a hand that has a 50% chance of being the best preflop hand vs the field and raise with it. This allows you to get away with much more after the flop. On the other hand, I do believe in occasionally widening your range against good opponents so players can't put you on a hand. Yet, even so, you need not do it very often and need not widen your hand range too much. Simply throwing in a random low range hand or two like 56offsuit or 47s until you have to show it down, will be enough to veil your hand range once opponents actually see the hands you are capable of raising with.
Online at low limits against an easy set of opponents, you need not worry if you make table selection a priority. Most people online are distracted and not paying close enough attention and/or do not have poker tracking software and thus are unaware of your range and how to use it to change their decision making.
The SB: 22+, A7+, K7+, Q8+, J8+, T6+, 97+, 85+, 75+, A2s+, K2s+, Q3s+, J4s+, T6s+, 96s+, 86s+, 74s+, 63s+, 53s+
Button: 33+, A8+, K9+, QT+, JT, T9, A2s+, K4s+, Q7s+, J7s+, T7s+, 97s+, 86s+, 76s, 65s
"Cutoff": 55+, AT+, KT+, QT+, A2s+, K7s+, Q9s+J9s+, T8s+, 98s
"Hijack": 66+, AT+, KJ+, QJ, A4s+, K9s+Q9s+, J9s+, T9s
"Lojack": 77+, AT+, KJ+, A8s+, K9s+, QTs+, JTs
UTG+ 2: 77+, AJ+, KQ, A8s+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs
UTG+ 1: 77+, AJ+, A9s+, KTs+, QTs+
1stAct: 88+, AJ+, ATs+, KTs+, QJs
This is about the loosest I would play as baseline strategy WHEN folded
to. IF someone has acted before, I only want to play the opening range
from their spot or tighter. For example if opponent under the gun limps
in I will only play 88+, AJ+, ATs+, KTs+, QJs. If opponent RAISES before you act, you want a range range that is BOTH tighter than what you would open with from opponent's spot AND tighter than his hand range. I like only playing hands that have a 50% chance of being as good or better than opponent's range, so take opponent's range (preflop raise percentage), adjust for position (since he is less likely to raise in early position) and divide by two. This is your hand range.
How do you adjust by position? A proper opponent should play fewer hands in early position and more in late position. The breakdown could look like this by multiples of their starting range
4.00 SB
2.34 Button
1.65 Cutoff
1.27 Hijack
1.04 UTG+3 (lojack)
0.87 UTG+2
0.76 UTG+1
0.66 UTG
But you want to err on the side of being too tight until you can observe that opponent is sophisticated enough to adjust by position. Another way to adjust is take middle position of the 4th player to act and assign them the same range, increase by 30% to the range for every position later than that player and decrease by 25% for every spot in earlier position.
For example say opponent plays 20% of all hands. The breakdown would look like this
UTG+3=20% UTG+2= 20*.75=15% UTG+1=15%*.75=11.25% UTG=8.4375%
Hijack=20*1.3=26% Cutoff=26*1.3=33.8% Button=33.8*1.3=43.94%.
I typically rate the button play and SB to be the same since there is one less player BUT the player is out of position on every street and probably won't want to raise quite so liberally.
So your worst hand you should play against this player depends where he raises from. If he raises from UTG+3 (lojack) and you are in the cutoff, you should play 10% of hands OR a raising hand from UTG+3 (lojack), whichever is a tighter hand range. In this case, UTG+3 requires you raise with 10.9% of hands so sticking with 10% is fine.
If you by default always take what you suspect is a tighter range than your opponent and not only that but EVERY hand in that range is tighter than opponent, your opponent will find it VERY hard to turn the tables and exploit you. Afterall, as long as you know how to read flops and opponent's tendencies, it should be very easy for you to pick up chips when you start with the better hand. EVEN when opponent flops really well, you won't be continuing that aggressively on every street except in cases where you also hit the flop very well or a big draw that can result in a winning hand.
You can make a few mistakes if you start with a tighter range of hands and still have a profitable strategy, particularly if you error on the side of not bluffing that often (playing tight) and aggressive (especially when you hit). If your table selection is good, you study opponents for 15minutes before sitting down and get a jump start on note taking, and you apply your knowledge correctly and start with a better hand, the field you are against hs just made it far too easy on you.
I prefer a tight preflop range and a loose aggressive postflop range in most spots. I want to continue on about 60-75% of all flops with a bet unless I either have a hand with showdown value on dry board and want to keep pot small, look weaker than I am and induce bluffs on future streets, or have a very weak hand on a dry board and perhaps have a backdoor draw or just not much of a hand and think I can improve my chances of a fold by betting the turn. If you pick up your backdoor draw then you might take the free card but in general want to be very aware of opponents that will check raise you and take the free card against them and only bluff those who either can't fold a big hand but don't check raise and/or those who are good bluffing targets... This way if you catch your draw (flush, straight,fullhouse) on the river you can overbet into a pot that has been inflated due to your semibluff, and if not you can give it up.
If you start with a top starting range mixed in with the occasional other cards particularly in situations where widening your range may be favorable you can take a lot of REALLY tricky lines of play as well that I will discus in the next post.
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