.jpg "5 Preflop Poker Mistakes Fish Always Make")
This article was written by blackrain79.com contributor Fran Ferlan.
If you want to improve your poker game, preflop is usually a good place to start.
However, preflop play can also be quite confusing to new players, since there are so many factors to consider.
If you find yourself having trouble with a lot of preflop spots, keep reading.
This article will show you the most common preflop mistakes amateur poker players make, and what you can do differently to instantly improve your results.
Also, recognizing these mistakes in other players will help you make better adjustments against them, which will hopefully help you take all their chips.
There’s a lot to cover in this one, so let’s get right into it.
Preflop Poker Mistake #1: Open-limping
Open-limping is one of the most common preflop mistakes, and it’s usually a tell-tale sign of recreational poker players.
Open-limping means just paying the big blind instead of open-raising when you are the first player to enter the pot.
For Example:
You are playing a $1/$2 cash game and somebody just calls the $2 blind preflop.
A lot of amateur poker players choose to open-limp because they are afraid to open-raise for one reason or another, so they hope to see a cheap flop instead.
But there are a couple of problems with this approach, and open-limping doesn’t guarantee that you will see a cheap flop.
In fact, it may just be the exact opposite.
Here’s why you should avoid open-limping altogether:
a) you can’t win the pot outright preflop
If you open-limp, you’re not giving the players in the blinds any reasons to fold. If you open-raise instead, you can sometimes win the flop outright preflop by making everybody else fold.
This means you can pick up a few pots even without a particularly strong hand.
b) you are inviting in multiway pots
A multiway pot is a pot with more than two players involved. The more opponents in the pot, the harder it is for you to win the hand, because it’s more likely that at least one player will have a stronger hand than you.
By open-raising instead, you are thinning the field preflop, so you are much more likely to win the pot post flop.
c) you are failing to extract value with your strong hands
If you have a strong hand, your best bet is to build up the pot with it as soon as possible.
The bigger the pot preflop, the easier it is for you to ship the rest of your stack in the middle post flop.
This has to do with pot geometry; a seemingly small adjustment to your preflop bet sizing can balloon to a big difference on future streets.
d) you are playing without the initiative
The player who open-raises preflop is perceived to have the strongest hand. This gives them the opportunity to make a continuation bet (or c-bet for short) on the flop.
C-bets are usually profitable, and you should be inclined to make one unless there’s a very specific reason not to.
When you open-limp, however, you can’t make a continuation bet, which puts you at a disadvantage.
e) you risk getting raised yourself
Finally, trying to see a cheap flop with open-limping often doesn’t work simply because another player can open-raise instead of you.
This means you need to call an additional bet to see the flop, when you could have just open-raised yourself (and probably paid less in the process).
Bottom line: if you are the first player to enter the pot, do so with an open-raise.
If another player or players limp in front of you, limping behind can work in some cases.
But more often than not, if another player limps in front of you, you should consider isolation-raising instead.
An isolation raise (or iso-raise for short) is an open-raise when another player or players have limped in front of you.
As the name suggests, the goal of the isolation raise is to isolate the opponent and hopefully play a heads-up pot against them post flop (preferably in position).
Since it’s the recreational players who are most likely to open-limp, isolation raising is a great way to try and take advantage of their post flop mistakes.
The standard iso-raise size is 3 BB + 1 BB per limper.
So 4 BB for 1 limper, 5 BB for two limpers etc.
You can add an additional BB if you are playing out of position.
Preflop Example Hand #1
You are dealt J♦T♦ in the SB.
A loose and passive player open-limps from the MP (middle position).
Another player limps behind from the BU (button).
You: ???
You should iso-raise to 6 BB.
Instead of limping behind in this spot, you can attempt an iso-raise and try to play a heads-up pot against what seems to be a recreational player.
You can choose a bigger bet size because there are two limpers in front of you, and you are playing out of position.
Check out my ultimate preflop bet sizing cheat sheet for much more.
Also, check out my recent video about things you should never do at the poker table.
Never miss my latest poker videos. Join 85,000+ who are already subscribed.
Preflop Poker Mistake #2: Playing Too Many Hands
One of the most common amateur poker mistakes is playing way too many hands preflop.
This is a big mistake due to the simple fact that most hands miss most flops in no-limit hold’em.
So the more hands you play, the more often you will miss the flop, and lose more money as a consequence.
You should only play starting hands that have a reasonable chance of connecting with the flop in some meaningful way.
This includes pocket pairs, suited Aces, suited connectors, and strong broadway hands.
The rest is trash and should be thrown away.
Check out my other article on EXACTLY which hands to play preflop for a much deeper dive including charts like this.
The hands outlined above equate to about 20% of all starting hands in no-limit hold’em.
The hands outlined above equate to about 20% of all starting hands in no-limit hold’em.
Now, folding 80% of the time preflop may seem restrictive, and even outright boring, and fair enough.
If you want to play poker for fun, you can play just about any hand that’s dealt to you. But you can’t expect to win any money over the long run that way.
Playing poker for fun and playing to win are entirely different things. So if you want to win, you may need to sacrifice a bit of boredom for it. This is a fair tradeoff in my book.
If you play stronger hands on average than your opponent, you can expect to win more money on average.
That’s because you will often make stronger combinations post flop than the players who play just about any random hand.
In practice, this means you will make stronger pairs, stronger straights and flushes and so on.
In other words, your hand will often dominate your opponents’, instead of the other way around.
A dominated hand is the one that’s unlikely to win against a stronger hand due to an inferior kicker.
For example, if you play Ace-King, you are dominating all the other Ax hands.
But if you play a hand like Ace-Two, your hand is dominated by all the other Ax hands with stronger kickers.
If you play a lot of weak to mediocre hands, you run the risk of only having the second strongest hand, which is the worst hand to have in poker.
Bear in mind that playing only the top 20% of hands is just a general guideline.
The number of hands you play will depend on a lot of other factors, namely your table position.
If you are playing in late positions (namely the cutoff and the button), you can play way more than 20% of hands.
Conversely, when you are playing in early positions, you should play even less than 20% of hands.
The earlier your table position, the stronger hands you need to play them profitably.
That’s because there’s a lot more players left to act after you, which increases the chances of at least one of them having a stronger hand than you.
For a full breakdown on preflop ranges from different table positions, check out Crushing the Microstakes.
Learn to Make $2000 Per Month in Small Stakes Games With My Free Poker Cheat Sheet
If so, then I wrote this free poker cheat sheet for you.
This is the best completely free poker strategy guide available online today. It shows you how to crush the small stakes games step by step.
Learn exactly what hands to play and when to bet, raise and bluff all in!
These are the proven strategies that I have used as a 10+ year poker pro to create some of the highest winnings of all time in these games.
Enter your details below and I will send my free poker "cheat sheet" to your inbox right now.
Preflop Poker Mistake #3: 3-Betting the Minimum Amount
Another common preflop mistake is using the wrong 3-betting size.
A 3-bet preflop is a re-raise against another player’s open-raise.
3-betting preflop is a very powerful play, whether you are betting for value or as a bluff, but it’s only effective if you choose an appropriate bet size.
A lot of amateur poker players make a 3-bet by simply “clicking back” and raising the minimum amount, which accomplishes nothing but announcing to the whole table that you don’t really know what you are doing.
In poker, there are two main reasons to put money into the pot: you can either bet for value when you expect to get called by weaker hands, or you can bet as a bluff when you expect stronger hands to fold.
3-betting the minimum amount accomplishes none of these.
Let’s examine the value betting part first.
As the name suggests, the point of a value bet is to extract value from weaker hands.
If you can get called by weaker hands (i.e. your hand is ahead), why would you only bet the minimum amount?
If you have a strong value hand, your best bet is to build up the pot with it as soon as possible.
For Example:
You hit Top Pair with Ace King.
If you 3-bet preflop, you are going to win a much bigger pot now.
If you 3-bet preflop, you are going to win a much bigger pot now.
And the best way to do that is to choose a meaningful 3-bet size preflop.
The bigger a pot you build up preflop, the easier it is to ship the rest of your stack in the middle post flop.
This is why you should avoid slowplaying post flop, especially at the lower stakes. More on why you shouldn’t slowplay below.
If you can’t bet for value, you can make a 3-bet with the intention of getting your opponent to fold.
This is known as a 3-bet bluff (or a light 3-bet).
If you are 3-bet bluffing, nobody is going to fold to a minimum size 3-bet.
You are giving your opponent no incentive to fold. Worse yet, you are giving them the opportunity to come back at you with a 4-bet.
So best case scenario is they call your bluff, and worst case scenario is they re-raise you and you are forced to fold.
If you want your 3-bets to be effective, you need to choose the appropriate bet size that will actually give your opponent pause.
A standard 3-bet size is 3 times the open-raise size if you are playing in position, and 4 times the open-raise size if you are playing out of position.
It’s advised to choose a bigger bet size when playing out of position because you want to charge your opponent a premium if they want the privilege of playing in position against you.
You are letting them know right away that if they want to get involved in a pot with you, it’s going to cost them.
Preflop Example Hand #2
You are dealt A♥A♣ in the SB (small blind). Villain open-raises to 3x from the MP.
You: ???
You should 3-bet to 12 BB.
You are dealt pocket Aces, the strongest starting hand in no-limit hold’em. Pocket Aces are the ultimate value hand, because your hand is guaranteed to be ahead of your opponent’s calling range.
This means that your best bet is to build up the pot with it as soon as possible.
You are playing the hand out of position, so your 3-bet size is 4 times the size of the open raise.
If your opponent is a recreational player who likes to call a lot, you can even increase your 3-bet size by an additional big blind or two.
Some players may object that they don’t want to “scare their opponents off” with big bets, and fair enough.
But to that objection, I would like to introduce the concept of price elasticity.
Price elasticity is a term borrowed from economics that dictates that the change in pricing affects the demand.
The more expensive the product, the weaker the demand and vice versa.
When you apply the concept to poker, it means that the bigger the bet size, the less often you get called.
But this is only the case if your opponents are elastic, meaning they take the pot odds into account.
Recreational players tend to be inelastic, meaning the size of the bet does not dictate how often they continue playing the hand.
If they like the hand, they will pay virtually any price for it, and if they don’t they’ll simply toss it away.
So there’s no point in trying to “induce a call” by choosing a smaller bet size against recreational players.
Offering better pot odds by making a smaller bet size may work against players who are paying attention.
But the fact is, recreational players usually only care about their own cards and little else.
That’s why it’s a good idea to use “exploitative” bet sizing against them.
Put simply, this means betting big with your strong hands, and letting them call you with whatever nonsense hand they happen to have.
For more advanced poker strategies, enroll in Blackrain79 Elite Poker University.
You will get a comprehensive step-by-step guide on how to play every single street in Texas Hold’em, along with countless example hands to make learning easier.
You will also learn advanced poker strategies to quickly build your bankroll and climb up the stakes with confidence.
The course contains 17 hours of advanced poker training, hundreds of step by step example hands and downloadable "cheat sheets" below all 50 videos.
If you are serious about taking your poker game to the next level, enroll today.
Preflop Poker Mistake #4: Not Buying in For a Full Amount
This one only applies to cash game players.
When you buy in at a cash game table, you have the option of choosing your buyin amount.
You should always choose the maximum buyin amount at cash games, which is usually 100 big blinds.
Some beginner poker players buy in for the minimum table amount because they’re afraid of losing their money, so they choose a smaller amount to “protect their downside.”
But there’s a couple of problems with this approach.
If you buy in for the minimum amount, you’re basically announcing to the whole table that you are not really confident in your playing abilities.
This makes you a target as soon as you sit down to play.
Skilled poker players always want to have as many chips in front of them as possible.
In poker, your chips are your ammunition. And the more ammo you have, the more options you have to exert pressure on your opponents and put them on decisions for their whole stack.
Also, the more chips you have in front of you, the more you can potentially win if you double up.
For example, let’s say you are dealt pocket Aces, the strongest starting hand in no-limit hold’em. Your opponent open-raises, you 3-bet, and your opponent 4-bet shoves all-in.
Your snap call, and your pocket Rockets hold up.
Congratulations, you just doubled up.
If you only had 40 big blinds in your stack, you won 40 big blinds. But if you had 100 big blinds in your stack, you would have won 100 big blinds (minus the rake, of course).
Of course, you also stand to lose more, but that’s beside the point.
When you play poker, losing from time to time is inevitable. There’s no point in trying to limit your losses because if you do, you are also limiting your potential upside.
If you don’t want to lose any money playing poker, the best you can do is simply stop playing altogether.
Sometimes you will lose even if you play perfectly. This is just the nature of the game, and it’s what makes poker exciting in the first place.
It can also be quite frustrating when you’re on the receiving end of a bad beat, for example versus the fishy players.
But the fact that you suffered a bad beat means you put your money in with a mathematical advantage.
If you keep doing that over and over again, you will win far more than you lose over the long run.
As long as you keep making plays with positive expected value, it doesn’t matter how you’re running session to session.
So instead of trying to protect your downside with buying in for the minimum amount, keep working on improving your game by reading articles like these.
If you’re not comfortable with losing your whole buyin (or a couple of them, for that matter), it’s a good sign you are not properly bankrolled for the stakes you are playing and should probably drop down in stakes.
If live cash games are too cost prohibitive to you, you can try playing poker online, where you can buyin for as little as $2 in NL2.
Bear in mind though, that there’s a substantial skill difference between live and online poker players, and the lower stakes online do not equate to lower skill level.
For example, if you are playing a $1/$2 live cash game in your local casino, you will likely encounter a lot of recreational poker players who make a ton of fundamental mistakes.
But if your try to play a $1/$2 cash game online (aka NL200), you will be playing against very skilled regulars, and even full-time professional or semi-professional poker players.
So it’s best to start at the very lowest limits, and gradually work your way up as you increase your skills and your bankroll.
Check out my articles on how to beat NL2 and how to beat NL5 if you play online poker.
As these are the two lowest limits available.
Preflop Poker Mistake #5: Slowplaying Big Hands
Slowplaying is the act of playing your hand passively (i.e. checking and calling) instead of aggressively (betting and raising) in order to conceal your hand strength.
A lot of beginner players love to slowplay because they believe winning poker is all about deception.
This is only true to an extent.
Winning poker is actually about making sound, rational decisions based on math and probabilities.
In other words, it’s about maximizing the expected value (EV) of your plays, while avoiding spots with negative expected value.
And the fact is, slowplaying is often not the most +EV play to make, and it may be costing you money.
Slowplaying can work if you can rely on your opponent to build up the pot for you.
For example, if you are playing against an overly aggressive player, you can try to trap them with your monster hand and simply let them donate their stack to you.
But in low stakes poker games, a lot of players tend to play too passively, not too aggressively, so relying on them to build up the pot for you is less likely to work.
Also, a lot of players at the lower stakes tend to overcall, so the best adjustment to make against this is to value bet heavily, not to slowplay.
Value betting means betting when you can get called by a lot of weaker hands.
In poker, most of your winnings will come from your strong value hands where your opponent has a weaker hand that’s strong enough to give you action.
This means that you won’t win most of your money with your genius deceptions, but by simply making the strongest hand combination and getting paid off.
This is another reason to be selective with the hands you choose to play, because you are more likely to actually make these strong combinations post flop.
Another reason you shouldn’t slowplay preflop is that you are inviting a lot of multiway pots this way.
A multiway pot is a pot with more than two players involved.
The more players involved in the pot, the less likely it is for you to win the pot.
For example, let’s say you are dealt pocket Aces. Against a single opponent with a random hand, your pocket Aces have a whopping 85% of equity.
But if you are up against four opponents, for example, you only have about 56% of equity.
So when some players complain about constantly getting their Aces cracked, it just may be the fact that they failed to “thin the herd” preflop, and allowed their opponents to realize their equity for cheap.
Preflop Example Hand #3
You are dealt Q♦Q♥ on the BU (button).
Villain open-raises to 3 BB from the MP (middle position). Another player calls from the CO (cutoff)
You: ???
You should 3-bet to (at least) 12 BB.
In spots like these, there's no point in slowplaying by flat calling.
If you flat call in this spot, you are inviting in a huge multiway pot and are allowing the players in the blinds to see the flop with great pot odds.
You will also play the hand without the initiative if you don't 3-bet, so you can't make a c-bet on the flop.
Finally, you are letting your opponents realize their equity for cheap.
If an Ace or a King comes on the flop, you will find yourself in an awkward position, because you won't be sure whether or not you have a top pair hand.
If you 3-bet, on the other hand, you are building up the pot with your value hand, and you can comfortably get called by a lot of weaker hands.
You are also creating smaller effective stack sizes, which makes your post flop play easier, as well.
Check out my recent video for more beginner poker tips you need to know.
5 Preflop Poker Mistakes Fish Always Make - Summary
If you want to improve your poker game, mastering the preflop is usually a good play to start.
Having a solid grasp of the preflop play will allow you to learn more advanced poker strategy, and it’s crucial for your long term success in this game.
Mastering the preflop play takes time, but if you manage to avoid some common preflop mistakes, you will already be ahead of the majority of the player pool.
With that in mind, here are the 5 most common preflop mistakes you should avoid.
1. Open-limping
If you open-limp, you can’t win the pot outright preflop, you are playing without the initiative and the range advantage, you are inviting in a lot of multiway flops, and you run the risk of getting raised.
If you are the first player to enter the pot, always do it with an open-raise.
2. Playing too many hands
You should only play hands that have a reasonable chance of connecting with the flop in some meaningful way. This includes pocket pairs, suited connectors, suited Aces, and strong broadway hands.
The rest is trash and should be thrown away.
3. 3-betting the minimum amount
3-betting the minimum amount accomplishes nothing except giving your opponent the opportunity to come back at you with a 4-bet, or simply allowing them to realize their equity for cheap.
Whether you 3-bet for value or as a bluff, size your 3-bets to at least 3 times the open-raise, or 4 times the open-raise if you are playing out of position.
4. Buying in for the minimum table amount
If you buy in for the minimum table amount, you’re telegraphing that you’re not really confident in your playing abilities.
Skilled poker players always want to have as many chips in front of them as possible in order to maximize their potential winnings.
5. Slowplaying big hands
If you have a strong value hand, make sure to build up the pot with it as soon as possible. The bigger the pot you build preflop, the easier it is to ship the rest of your stack in the middle post flop.
Slowplaying big hands can backfire because you are allowing your opponents to catch up and realize their equity for cheap.
Lastly, if you want to know the complete strategy I use to make $2000+ per month in small/mid stakes games, grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.
