(Original post date: August 31, 2007)
Let’s see if I can write a beginner strategy. This will help me to solidify my own base-basic game plan.
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This is written for you if you’re planning to join a home game, a company fundraiser, to play some play money online, or trying the micro tables. If you’re playing a tournament (MTT; multi table tournament), Sit and Go (SnG, or STT; single table tournament), or a freeroll, these basics can still apply, but, need some modification for when the blinds increase.
First, seating position and their names. This changes every hand because position is labeled relative to who is the dealer. The small blind (SB) and big blind (BB) are immediately to the left of the dealer and have to post their blinds before the dealing begins. The spots immediately after the blinds are called under-the-gun (UTG) and under-the-gun plus one (UTG+1). Next are the middle position spots, MP, MP+1 and MP+2. These are followed by the late positions, the cutoff (CO, the position immediately to the right of the dealer) and the button (the dealer).
SB, BB, UTG and UTG+1 are considered “early position“. UTG and UTG+1 have the disadvantage of having to make the first plays preflop, as well as first after the SB and BB on the flop, turn, and river. This disadvantage means you can only play the best hands from UTG and UTG+1. Moving to middle and then to late positions you can play progressively weaker and weaker starting cards because 1) there are fewer players after you that might have even bigger hands, and 2) you get to bet after the earlier positions so you get to see what they do before you have to decide. SB and BB are special early positions because you already have some money committed to the pot, and we’ll consider them separately.
So, from early position (UTG and UTG+1) play only:
AA / KK / QQ / AK
From middle position play all the early position hands, plus:
JJ / TT / AQ / AJ
From late position, all the early and middle position hands, plus:
99 / 88 / 77 / AT / KQ / KJ
(Note that for simplicity I have not considered whether or not the cards are of the same suit or not. In reality, being suited adds only a small winning percentage to the relative value of the cards and is often highly overvalued by beginners.)
All of these starting hands assume that 1) no one else other than the blinds have put any money into the pot, and 2) you are going to raise with your hand. You should raise to 3 or 4 times the big blind, so if the big blind is 0.10, put in 0.30 or 0.40. By doing so, you 1) make it costly for weak hands after you to play, 2) announce to the table that you have a good hand and a high expectation of winning this hand. This puts the pressure on anyone deciding to play; you have the hand to beat.
Gap Concept
What if someone else ahead of you has already raised? The gap concept says that in order for you to play, you need to have at least as good a hand as you would have raised with in the raiser’s position. In other words, if a player in MP+1 raises, he should be only raising with early position cards (AA/KK/QQ/AK) or middle position cards (JJ/TT/AQ/AJ) and in order for you to call you have to have cards that you would play only from that same position. This is because he has announced that he has a good hand, so if you are going to play, you need to be able to compete with this hand. Makes sense, if the opponent raises from MP+1, that means he’s saying he has AA/KK/QQ/AK/JJ/TT/AQ/AJ, so if you are in late postion, you should not call his raise if you have AT because you’re likely to lose. Just imagine that an Ace is the high card on the flop and you think, good, I hit top pair, but your opponent is betting with AQ thinking, why does this person not understand he’s beat? (In this situation if MP+1 has KK/QQ/JJ/TT you are winning, but pocket pairs occur much less frequently than non-paired pockets. Playing the flop, turn and river will, hopefully, be a later entry)
Limped pots
In reality at home games or at play money or micro limit on-line poker people will play very loose (meaning they play more hands than I’ve listed) and weak (meaning they almost never raise). This means that often when in middle or late position you’ll be faced with 2, 3, 4 or more people already on the pot who haven’t raised but instead just called the big blind. This is called limping. When this happens, I recommend that if you have a first position hand (AA/KK/QQ/AK), raise, but instead of raising 3 - 4 times the blind, raise 4 plus one more for each limper. If you have 2 limpers ahead of you, raise 4 + 2 = 6 times the blind. The reason for this is that each limper has increased the size of the pot, so in order for you to create a situation that they are not getting good odds to call, you have to make the bet higher.
If you have middle or late position types of hands and there are 2 or more limpers ahead of you, just call. I find that in these situations raising often does not chase all the weak hands from the pot, which is fine if you have one of the top hands, but can be tricky when you have a slightly lesser hand. Call and see what happens on the flop.
Playing from the blinds
I’ve left this section until now because some concepts from the intervening sections apply to playing from the blinds. From the BB, obviously if no-one raises you can check and see the flop cards for no additional cost. From the SB, if you have 2 or more limpers in before you, then it only costs you 1/2 a big blind more to see the flop, and you should do so with almost any except the worst hands. If you have decent hand, say one that is in the list of hands to play from late position, you can call with one limper. If you have a hand that should be played from early or middle position and there’s no or maybe one limper, raise, and hope to take down the hand preflop, but remember the rule for raising when there are limpers; 4 times the big blind plus one for each limper.
What if someone raises, and you have a good hand? Remember that the blinds will be first to act on the flop, turn, and river, so all the other players with have an advantage over you. Use the recommended hands for the early postion hands and don’t call a raise from someone without AA/KK/QQ/AK. In fact, re-raise their bet with these hands, because you have a premium hand plus you will be out of position during subsequent betting. Hopefully they will realize that they are at risk and will fold.
Playing tight
All of this advice is all based on the concept of playing tight, positional poker preflop. This is by far the easiest way for a beginner to start, for the simple reason that you play only good value hands relative to your position. By playing only good value starting hands in good position you keep yourself from getting into too many difficult situations later on.
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Note: This entry has been edited at a later date because this seems to be a popular entry to view. If you have question/comments, please feel free to post in the comment section.
I’ve never gotten around to posting follow up entries to this. I’d recommend the following to beginners:
- Tight/passive/aggressive
- Fear of raising series, but start at the first entry which will be at the bottom
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