Preflop Limit Holdem: An Important Balancing Act by Ian J In high stakes poker, players often find themselves playing

against the same small group of players on a day to day or week to week basis. This poses some interesting problems when trying to implement a solid strategy to follow. The main problem is that you must balance your play, or else youre going to be like an open book to your smart and experienced opponents. Many people havent considered the importance of balancing with regards to their overall strategy. They have a certain way that they play a given hand and they stick to that plan. When it comes to limit holdem, my view of balance involves a strategy that is geared towards not allowing others to narrow your hand range greatly based on a single action you make in a hand. A good example of this would be playing in the BB against a button raise. Many solid, winning, tight aggressive players make very blatant errors in their play of the BB against the button raise. The error isnt so much fundamental, but more lacking in balance. Their general strategy is to call with a high percentage of their hands, and three bet the really good ones. For instance, if they three bet you from the big blind, you can pretty much narrow their hand range immediately down to A8+, 55+ and KJ+. That seems like a fairly accurate range for the player Im trying to describe. Youre probably thinking, that seems fine, those hands are all ahead of the buttons range, so why not three bet and get the money in while I rate to have the best hand? Well sure, that makes some sense. However, now youre playing against someone who is an aggressive player, a good hand reader, has position on you, and now youve told him about where you stand in the hand. This is a very bad thing. To counteract this obvious problem, I had a bit of an epiphany. What if I just called in the big blind against a button raise every single time I wanted to play the hand? Now, not only does the button not know what you have, but hes very likely to give you excessive action after the flop when you have a strong hand. Now when you checkraise a given flop, the player on the button cant really narrow down what you have that much based on the fact that you only called preflop. If its in the back of his head that you could have a hand like JJ or AQ right now, youve won a small battle. Playing in the small blind against a button raiser is another situation that Ive thought about and discussed extensively. Ive had some good discussion with a few expert limit holdem players about the merits of calling a button raise while in the SB and what hands to do it with. Since I advocate balancing my play, I contended that you should sometimes call with A8, sometimes JT, and other times 67s. The norm if youd like to call it that is to fold the 76, call the JT, and three bet the A8. This is not to say that I never three bet the A8 because its my standard play with that hand. However, if they can know for sure that when youve called in the small blind and checkraised an A 7 3 flop with two suits that you dont have the ace, the button is then at a huge advantage. Im not really sure when this idea became so clear to me. Back in the hey day of online limit holdem (read: Party 15/30 up to 100/200), I would play with such an obvious strategy that Im surprised I ever made a nickel. If I raised in early position and got three bet, I would cap JJ+ and AK religiously when heads up. By doing this, I

was making it very easy on my opposition because I was essentially telling them what I had. If they were paying enough attention, they could just correctly fold a hand like AQ instantly if the flop came 552 with two suits and I had four bet and bet the flop. If I were just calling with my whole hand range in this spot, they would feel much more inclined when I checkraised them on the flop to continue and hope that I had a flush draw or 88 when really I could have them drawing slim or dead. The extra value you make up in these situations by not exposing your hand strength when heads up and out of position is enormous. On the other hand, you can use another strategy to balance your big blind play against a button raiser. That is, you could start three betting with a much wider hand range than just the premiums. This would just involve mixing in a bunch of three bets with hands like 86s, Q9, K3s etc. I have only one issue with utilizing this strategy. I was talking to one of the best limit holdem players Ive ever played against one day and I mentioned how I felt like a sissy when I played him out of position because I ended up checking and calling a lot because I never knew where I was at against him. He said to me, (paraphrased), I dont think its ever a mistake to play smaller than normal pots out of position against good players. I got to thinking about that and it seemed to make a lot of sense to me. Therefore, I believe that just calling the overwhelming majority of the time in the big blind is superior to three betting a larger range. By three betting a larger range youre often heads up and firing away with no hand out of position against a good player. This concept also applies to my thoughts on calling from the small blind with some hands rather than three betting any hand youre going to play. One instance I can recall from a recent session where I put the concept of not exposing hand strength when heads up and out of position to good use came in a $200/$400 game on Pokerstars. I was the small blind with AKo in a four handed game and the first two players passed to me. I raised and the big blind three bet me. Many people would cap this hand right here, I elected to just call. The flop was AT3 rainbow and I checkraised him. He called and raised me on the turn when an 8 came. I was now able to three bet him and bet the river, he called both bets, and I beat his AJ. If I 4 bet preflop, its likely that he would raise the flop, I would three bet and he would call me down, profiting me 5.5 big bets. By calling preflop and getting to put three bets in on the turn, I was able to make 6.5 big bets on the hand. This was obviously a perfect situation for me, but its the type of small edge you have to push to be as successful as possible in poker. In closing, balancing is an often overlooked but very important aspect of limit holdem. By balancing your play, others will have much more trouble playing against you because you will make it that much harder for them to deduce what you have in a given hand. They can never know which flop textures would be favorable for you when you just call their button raises from the big blind. This is because you could have AK, TT, K5, T9, 56, or any hand in between. Once you get to the point where youre playing high stakes and seeing the same competition all the time, keeping your opponents guessing and causing them to make mistakes against you should become a key part of your strategy.