Main reason to be agressive pre-flop?

I started playing for real money recently at Party, and have noticed I play pretty passive pre-flop (basically, lots of small calls to see flops, often with pretty marginal hands, the big hands I would raise with (QQ and better) don't come up often enough to offset my otherwise passive preflop activity). I have been playing .5/1 limit games mostly, full tables. It's woking fine for me, I'm up a little bit, and I tend to see alot of flops, but this stlye appears to go against the conventional wisdom.

I imagine more aggressive play is reccommended to avoid being pushed out on raises and losing a bunch of small calls bets, and to chase out flush/straight draws if you have a nice pair. However, betting in with something other then a big pair can end up being pretty disappointing when the flop comes up without getting a piece of it, especially if there are a couple overards. So why not pay the BB to see a few flops (most of the time in the games I have been in, a call of the BB gets you to the flop)? I was wondering if the math worked out so that calling with marginal hands (say 9To, A4o or 8Ts) to see flops just doesn't pay for itself in the long run?

(I've seen the thread discussing playing 32s, etc, which I thought was a great discussion of how different players can make different stlyes work).

Great forums, btw.

Alright I shall dabble at helping

At the very low limits you'll find that it is easier to see more flops because many people follow the mentality of wanting to see the next 3 cards before they confirm that they have good/bad hand. You'll notice if you move up to higher levels that if you try and call a hand you will often get raised on it. You will thus beleaking a lot of BBs as you fold or jst calling a raise when you shouldn't.

It's not a good habit to get into for a couple of reasons.

1) It will obviously set you up in poor stead for higher stekes

2) More importantly You will soon find yourself in very difficult positions. For example with A5o you hit an A on the flop. What do you do? You have the top pair, but someone else at the table could easily have a better kicker than you, another A wont change that and that only leaves you chasing 5s, of which there are only 3 mor to get. It's a very dangerous position to be in, there are much more profitable methods. Next thing you'll find yourself calling these hands as you want to take every pot you're in and then you'll soon find yourself losing.

For me the main reason not to see all the flops is to avoid these situations of uncertainty, if I'm in hand I want to be sure the stats are in my favour.

(I'm currently seeing about 25%-30% flops - and it's a cheap place to see them)

I hope that is of some help

Thanks for the reply, I think you are right that I am getting away with some play at low limit games that will cost me later on, which is what prompted the question, really. According to pokertracker, I'm seeing about 55% of flops (which seems way high, I didn't think it was that big a number until PT calculated it for me). Obviously position and the actions of the other players have a big role, playing late with fewer folks in the pot ahead of me changes he game completely, and makes it easier to stay in. The A5 looks better if thre are only 2-3 other players still in after the flop.

I think playing limit shields me a bit as well, but I figure starting with low limit ring for the experience and to clear the bonus, try some SnG's and tournaments, and see where I'm at. Having a blast right now though.

your educated guesses about the reasoning behind tight pre-flop play are correct. there are indeed mathematical quantifications of the expected value of every 2-card hand. these have been derived through both computer simulations and from actual hand histories of real poker players.

you should only be seeing the flop about 20-27% of the time, including the BB. there are obvious hands you should be playing like AA/KK/QQ/AK. there is obvious junk that can never be played, like 52 offsuit. then there are marginal hands that seem to win sometimes, but actually lose a hell of a lot more often, like 65 offsuit and A5 offsuit. then there are hands that seem good but are actually long-term losers or breakeven hands, like KT offsuit. these are just a waste of your time, adding unnecessary variance to your bankroll.

the idea behind raising a non-pair hand like AQ suited before the flop is simple. you expect to miss the board most times, but on those times you hit, the pot will be much much bigger because every raise you make adds many bets to the pot (from the other players). so the few times you drag a giant pot more than make up for the times you miss and lose just one extra bet.

it's like doubling down on 11 in blackjack. you cannot possibly expect to hit a ten every time. but when you do, the 3:2 payoff makes up for those other times you missed. so you have to do it every time, consistently, and not on a whim or a "feeling" that "this time" you're going to hit. otherwise what will happen is you will raise one time and miss, then limp in another time and hit, but the pot you drag will be so small it won't recover your previous losses.

search the web or pick up a poker book and you will easily find a chart of proper hold em starting hands. those who stray from the recommended starting hands may get lucky from time to time but will end up losers in the long run (unless they are true experts in post-flop play).

ChezJ

What! limit?

Oh, I was thinking NL, I wouldn't know about limit play, it's a black art.

i almost played a game of limit with my friends one time but we decided on rock paper scissors instead.

i almost played a game of limit with my friends one time but we decided on rock paper scissors instead.

lol

Thanks for the response ChezJ, that's sort of what I suspected, but since I was doign well playing lots of flops, I wasn't sure if I was just on the good side of the probability distribution, or what.

I know low limit may seem pretty dull, but so far it's a great place to experiment with real money to see what works. You can really force yourself to go agasint some of your natural tendencies and try things out to see what works. I'm only 400 hands or so into online poker, so it really helps to sharpen the game (and clear the bonus).

Tried playing the more conventional/reccommended stlye last night, with interesting results. Playing so few hands can be pretty dull, this will be my biggest adjustment, not taking a hand just because I'm bored. I suppose multitable would help with that, but I'll save that experiment for another day. First table I got unlucky with some nice hands, but the second table was very interesting. It got to the point that no one wanted to play against me, I pretty constantly raised pre-flop and with any reasonable flop was extremely agressive, calling out when I thougth I might be getting bluffed. Eventually the table just broke up. Was definately a differnt experience. Didn't actually make as much money as I had been, oddly enough, in fact, due to the tough beats on the first table, I was down a bit for the night. It's a completely different dynamic that you can force into the table though. Would be much harder in NL.

the information i provided applies to both limit and no limit. however due to the larger-sized pots you can win in NL, you can afford to play a few more speculative hands pre-flop than you can in limit, where the relatively smaller pots won't repay you for all the times you miss the flop.

yes it is true that playing fewer hands can get boring and that is why so many limit players do the multitabling thing. i don't multitable but i do surf the web (especially FTR) like crazy when i'm playing online. or i watch my opponents like a hawk and take notes on every single thing they do (raise or call with top pair, chase gutshots, limp with AK, etc.) so that when i end up in a pot with them i can exploit their betting patterns. same deal if i'm playing live. i watch my opponents for patterns and tells when i'm not in the hand, and this makes for an interesting sport in itself.

if you are having trouble getting action because you raise so much, then you need to move tables. most tables give you MORE action when you raise because it puts them on tilt to think you are just raising for the hell of it.

ChezJ

Sort of as a follow up, I've been playing much tighter, only getting to/past the flop with the more "reccommended" starting cards, and I'm getting killed, really. The problem is, you go in with KK, and bet it hard, and even after a rag flop, anyone with an ace or a draw hangs around, no one raises the bet (after I do), so anyone with a draw doesn't leave. If an ace comes up on the turn or river, you pretty much know you're dead. You just can't put the pressure on enough to push folks out, at least I haven't, except for the one game I discussed earlier, where folks just started running away from me. You (obviously) need to be pretty successful on the hands you decide to play, if you only play a couple an hour to make up for the blinds.

So, it seems I need to get even more tight/agressive, go back and see if my prior/looser way works, or change games. Good news is I'll clear my bonus here this weekend, and be able to get off the limit tables and play a few SnG's, which I am quickly coming to prefer. At this point, it's still all just an experiment.