Pro Poker Tips - Correct Pre-flop Play

In all forms of poker, there is really no such thing as correct pre-flop play. You will no doubt have seen hand charts and such but these are merely examining default plays. Correct pre-flop play in any form of poker is closely connected to the prevailing game conditions.

It is a bit like driving a car in different weather conditions. The stopping distances and performance of the car would be drastically different in wet weather to dry weather and then icy weather would be different again. This means that there is no safe speed to drive your car that is set in stone, much of it depends on the weather conditions.

This is precisely the case with poker when discussing pre-flop play. If the game is passive then you can open up and play more hands. You can limp in with speculative hands like pocket pairs or even suited connectors and look to see a cheap flop as no one is raising. Likewise if the game is full of tight playing rocks, you can now adjust by attacking the blinds more with a far wider range of hands.

If you were sitting in the cut-off and you had a highly aggressive maniac sitting on the button then correct pre-flop play suddenly involves tightening up a great deal and not trying to steal the blinds with marginal hands. Raising with a hand like J-9 is pretty sound when you have tight rocks to your left but if you are going to get re-raised then a hand like J-9 is not a hand that you really want to be getting involved with.

So the correct pre-flop play is now no longer to raise with the J-9 but to fold with it. It is this part of poker that novice and even many intermediate players struggle with. Hand charts may have some good sound strategic uses for novice players but they don’t allow the player to be able to expand much beyond the novice level. If you are multi-tabling then hand charts can still have their uses.

But the fact is that multi-tabling isn’t really conducive to playing great poker as you simply cannot feel what the players are doing unless you are using tracking software of course. Knowing what is likely to happen after you have acted is what is required to be able to ascertain what correct pre-flop play really is. This is why some of the plays that certain players make on television can often look very strange when taken out of context.