Preflop Theory

If you want to solve these questions yourself you'll need to run your own preflop simulations (or pay someone to do it for you). I suggest you look into these products:

• Holdem Resources Calculator
  
• Monker Solver
  
• Rocket Solver
  
• Simple Preflop
  

Out of these, I would recommend Rocket Solver. It isn't as feature rich, but easier to use than the rest. Preflop is going to very resource intensive, especially 300bb deep. I would try to limit it to 5 players for something like this.

This is definitely an area that's been neglected by content creators, given that preflop situations are so common and important to our bottom lines.

Please let me know if you find any good resources. I've searched and struggled even to find solved preflop ranges for specific rake structures.

Ie: there's a soft splashy local game with high rake, 10% with max of $6+$2 (almost 2 BB/hand at 2/5 NL) that rakes even if there is no flop, and I haven't been able to find solved ranges specific enough for the rake structure. A lot of cash charts assume no flop/no drop, and thus prefer 3-betting more. How much should I adjust though if a player opens to $20, I 3-bet to $60, everyone folds and the casino rakes $6 out of the $27 that was in the pot prior to my raise?

Anyway, good luck finding the resources you're looking for. In live play the type of adjustments you brought up in your original post are very important.

Variety of possible flop combinations and types, allows to do absolutely anything you want pre-flop, in my opinion.

The real NLHE strategy starts after the flop is dealt.

Thanks for the tip! I've been playing around with HRC some for ICM spots in tournaments. I hadn't even thought about using it for cash game spots.

I used to have this attitude when playing deep-stacked cash. If you're playing for fun it's fine. The reality though is that there is a line as to which combos will show a profit long term, and playing certain hands will be -EV. That doesn't mean you can't play more hands than a solver suggests, assuming you have an edge post flop.

Still there's a line somewhere. A lot of hands you shouldn't be playing will only be slightly -EV, so it's not totally obvious that playing them is a leak.

A lot of times you just end up overfolding on some future street and losing a tiny bit of EV with the weaker combos. That or you get coolered a little more often in situations like when you make a weak flush and run into a bigger flush and stuff like that.

My strategy concept may pay out as a deep breath you take before you dive into the waters of each hand.

If you think and analyze precisely every street, you're more likely to make a mistake. Concentration is so important.

Thanks for the reply. I can’t spend the money on a new tool for now, but I will definitely do so in the future, so I’ll revise them better then.

Glad to read this. I was thinking the same, but I wondered if I was missing something.

By the replies on this thread, I don’t think I will. Except maybe using the tools tombos21 referred to. But I’ll let you know if I find something that can give us good guidelines, but without having to do all the work ourselves.

Definitely. But also online. Even at microstakes I see some regs 3betting 3% of hands, and others 10%. I know using the same calling range the preflop charts refer to is not correct. And one can think of adjustments by oneself, but it would be nice to go a bit deeper into them.

The reason it's not treated that often is that there's endless possible situations and ways you would have to change your preflop ranges to adapt to them. Also playing with preflop solvers is annoying because they take so long to compute.

One thing you can do is play with the HU preflop solver in gtowizard to get a sense for how things work even though your game is not HU. Solving for every specific exploitative scenario is not very practical, it's generally better to try to understand the general principles from looking at a few solves and learning to extrapolate those.

Adjusting correctly preflop is one of the toughest things to do in poker, since it requires a few prerequisits:
1- Understanding all the base principles that affect EV preflop
2- Knowing all of the default charts by heart (Otherwise, if you're a nit your adjustments will still all be nitty and if you're loosey goose your adjustments will all be loosey goosey still)
3- Having a high enough level of focus to make a lot of small adjustments in very small mundane situations

You can always adapt your post flop strategy to your pre-flop actions, in every hand. You just have to be a flexible player and be aware of how flexible your game is (to know what you can theoretically do pre-flop and what you should avoid).

This is a frequent comment- use solvers to understand general principles.

To me, that means that these general principals are, in fact, general; they are not unique to the individual solver user. Yet, I don’t recall seeing any detailed statement on what these principals are. Yes, indifference and balance are frequently mentioned but I would think there is much more on what, when and how.

If there are such information resources I would hope someone can reference them.

i feel like you need to build your preflop strategy sort of on the fly in response to how everyone is playing. although its fine to have a default baseline.

I also think that the use of strategic skills and knowledge depends on the size of the pot. Players will play small or medium pots automatically, while the big pots are played with deep strategic analysis of the situation. It's kind of strange, but that's just the way it is.

Conclusion: The more money you put pre-flop into the pot, the more likely the complex strategy will come into play later on.

Just use GTO wizard. You'll get pretty far with that. I disagree with the notion of doing preflop ranges on the fly or doing whatever you want. You need a very solid baseline otherwise it is too easy to get carried away and play too many hands. I've often played against players with VPIPs that are higher than 40% that surprisingly have good postflop play, but I would bet their winrate would be way way higher if they chose to fold preflop a lot more and just play a good solid range.

There was a time when I played lots of hands, but versus some people it just seemed like an uphill battle because I'd reach a node where I just have a lot of junk and my opponent didn't. This works out fine when the opposition over folds or does the opposite where they just never believe you, but versus a semi balanced opponent it is a nightmare.

If you are going to do one thing to improve your game, I think preflop is the most important focus. It is the only betting street that you can practically memorize and it comes up all the time.

GTOwizard recently added a bunch of different solved preflop sizings (possibly in response to this thread). Thanks Tombos!