Am I the only one in the forum that is sick of people saying "fold pre" when a player makes a close/marginal call pre flop....obviously there are spots when fold pre is the obviously correct play and the original poster needs to be told he made an error....but the instances I am talking about if there is a raise in the cut off to somewhere around $12 at a 1/2 table and there is a call on the button and we are in the BB with holdings such as A5 suited, 10 7 suited, or KJ type hands....for the past months I have been reading people say "fold pre" to those hands....why? Are any of you actually doing this in game? So you are strictly playing AQ, AK, and large pocket pairs pre flop? Doesn't that strategy have huge reverse implied odds that come with it? Doesn't it turn most of your hands face up pre/post flop?

I'm just not a fan of this type of advice and I am wondering if I am in the minority or not....seems like such an exploitable strategy

OOP without initiative in most likely only a 3way pot with a speculative/dominated hand is a major leak, and even moreso if you don't play well postflop, imo.

Gtightisrightfacingaraise,imoG

these are beyond marginal calls they are terrible calls pre.

well you're not obligated to take the advice

yes it's exploitable if you flop a straight with KJo or a flush with A5s. But that only happens once in a million years. How many other times do you check/fold?

(I am not talking about creative play obviously or other dynamics assuming it's a routine 1/2 game).

Good poker at the low
Levels is really
Really boring.


It's also highly exploitable.

If you're not ok with that then just play for fun.

Yes, I fold those hands, AINEC.

If you are playing 100 bbs stacks and the raise is to 6 bbs, you do not have profitable implied odds to call those hands. Sure, you may flop 2-pr now and again, but it is a losing prop long-term. Compounding the incorrect call is playing oop which makes it much more difficult to build a pot and get a fair return on your investment (i.e. call). There is also reverse implied odds.

Imho, folding pre >80% of the time is probably correct for most players.

GL!

A couple of thoughts.

The examples you give are all folds for me. With the right reads on V's, they might be worth playing, but against unknowns they're all snap folds (especially KJ).

That said, I think there is some reflexive "fold pre" when a difficult decision develops post flop. Obviously, folding pre would have avoided that difficult decision, but that doesn't necessarily mean folding pre is right. Any holding can develop a difficult decision after the flop. Giving up a profitable opportunity because it might develop a difficult decision is dropping EV.

I would say good ABC poker at low levels is boring (but profitable). However, it's possible to increase one's win rate by correctly identifying mistakes V's are making and correctly exploiting them -- which makes the game much more interesting. We're more engaged in hands we're not playing as we look for the mistakes and we occasionally get to make a non-ABC move in the right spots. Obviously, attempting this level of play carries with it the risk of falling into FPS or incorrectly identifying "mistakes" or exploiting them improperly.

trouble hands. what are they?

What you're saying is true. We look FR ways to exploit opponents while
Minimizing being exploited. What most people don't understand is that's exactly what we're doing when we fold pre most of the time.

We exploit opponents who play too many hands by playing a stronger range.

We avoid being exploited OOP or when we're not as skilled by folding pre to avoid making big mistakes.


Keep it simple stupid works.

Well being tired with fold pre here no problem, just skip it.
Being tired with fold pre in game is worse.

Because, for the most part, it's not profitable to play these hands out of the BB to a raise from the CO.

Depends on position, effective stack size, villain tendencies, etc.

Because those hands are the suck OOP, multiway, with short stacks, etc. LOL, I would 3b all of those before I'd call with them against a CO open and BTN call.

Grunch:

Fold pre.

A5s is certainly a good 3 bet candidate in a squeeze spot. Specially if you have history of OR being LAGy or folding to 3 bets.

But the simple answer to "why?" we say fold pre: because a call isn't profitable.

There really aren't a lot of hands where a call from the BB after an MP open and B call is profitable. Even fewer where a call is more profitable than a 3 bet. In today's game I wonder if even baby pocket pairs are profitable as a call unless we win without flopping a set some significant amount of time.

I think KJ is a much better 3bet hand, but usually not in a 1/2 game that is too short stacked to allow us enough wiggle room post flop without committing them on a cbet. Also, the player needs to be a little more advanced, in other words they're past and have already mastered pf play strategies.

I say fold pre with those types of hands simple because if you hit an ace with A5 on the flop you're probably outkicked...

It puts you in a tough situation that you could have avoided and waited until a better hand comes along.

I think this range is very exploitable, but it's rare at the 1/2 table that anyone will be able to remember and put you on an accurate range.

A5 has the card removal going for it. KJ has decent card removal too so I say 3-bet or fold both of em.

My usual game plays very loose to a raise PF but surprisingly tight to a 3-bet so YMMV.

I'm sure this thread is an echo chamber by now, but I'll try to grunch it

Playing drawing hands from OOP is a losing proposition because they are usually going to play their hands perfectly against your draw. They'll bet you off your draw and/or not pay you when it hits. You should be more willing to defend your button with A5s than your BB. The $2 of overlay does not overcome the bad position. Back when I played 6-max online I remember looking at my stats and half of all my winnings came from the button. I was barely breaking even UTG. Position is so important in these games. When I'm OTB I'm looking for any reason at all to play the hand. When I'm in the blinds I'm looking to find any reason to fold. If you want to splash around and make thin calls do it in position. I really felt like my poker game moved to the next level once I figured out how important position is.

That said your post is too generic to really answer here. Most of the posters on this forum are proven long term winners in LLSNL games. We have a pretty good idea how to beat the average opposition. So if everyone says "fold pre" that's because thousands of hours of playing winning poker have shown it works. If you think you can open up your blind play and make more money then do it over a significant sample of hours and prove us wrong. Search the forums for some studies on blind play, they're out there, and as far as I know they all point to the same conclusion: Everybody loses money in the blinds and folding is usually best.

Your question is part of a more fundamental question that gets asked from time to time: Why don't people give an alternative view from the basic, ABC approach to a question that would be a more sophisticated approach?

The first answer is that we lack sufficient information to develop a +EV alternative solution. The HH will often have nothing more that a villain is a TAG (rare) or LAG. We'll then see that the villain limped/called pf, which puts in doubt whether the Hero even knows what those terms mean. For alternative line to make sense, we need to know much more about their range, how they handle pressure on each street and what their weaknesses are. For a simple example, take your CO raise to $12 and the button call. If I know that the CO is raising super light and will fold to a 3bet 90% of the time while the button will fold about the same, I'll 3bet two napkins. It is the +EV play. The problem is in LLSNL, people are raising as tight as QQ+ and aren't folding to a 3 bet. They aren't likely to fold on the flop to a bet. Therefore, it is impossible to make money with T7s in the BB. Therefore, it is a fold.

The second answer is related. If I'm sufficiently good to notice enough information so someone can come up with an alternative line, I'm probably good enough to not need to ask the question. I won't create the HH.

So most HHs here are by players that graduated from reading a book to trying to apply the knowledge. They aren't going to have the skills to exploit people and need the advantages of better cards and position to win. Therefore, even giving them an alternative line is going to cause them to lose money because they'll miss all the conditions necessary to make the alternative line a good one.

Of course the standard line is exploitable. LLSNL is about playing an exploitable style. Occasionally, you'll run into a player that tries to exploit TAG player. Their problem is that they don't just mix in a bluff to be GTO. They go to the other extreme and are easy to pick off.

Playing a tight-aggressive value-heavy strategy at low stakes works precisely because it doesn't matter that your hands are face up, people will pay you off and then explain why they had to play it like that.

Those tend to be the same people that call pre with trouble hands and then the kicker train takes them on a 3 station ride to value town.

EDIT

Yeah looks like I got slowponied by venice, only his post was much better. OP, read #18 twice.

I'll join the echo chamber. Opponents will exploit you for tons of BBs when you call with these hands oop multiway. I'd sometimes 3! bluff with these hands given the right dynamics, depth, etc, etc.

Fold pre

yeah, it moved down one level.

OP, you are absolutely right. you may have chosen your examples badly since these are probably preflop folds due to the stupid big open, but the amount of wrong "fold pre" advice on this forum is insane.

you can and should defend very wide vs normal sized opens due to math reasons, and folding is just a mistake.

re the point proven long term winners etc, firstly I doubt that there are more winning than losing players on this forum, sec it prob has to do with the unbelievable low level of play at these games. still, if you are making a mathematical mistake you are making a mathematical mistake, and you are leaving value on the table. just bc you may be a breakeven or small winner at donkfests like this does not make you a good poker player, most of those are just less atrocious than their competition.

just bc someone has a few k posts, a fancy avatar and a tone in his postings that he preaches absolutes does not make the nonsense coming out of his brain one bit more valuable.

cliffs: your examples are badly chosen and are folds pre.
the fold pre advice on this subforum is insanely bad.

This was so tilting because I thought no one else noticed how prevalent this is. Your comment is incredibly cathartic! Thanks!

Poker rooms differ so greatly throughout the country that people who play in tight, nutty games all the time tend to develop the belief that all poker is tight and nitty. As a result, they assume that a raise from EP is basically 1010+/AK. In my poker room it is basically ATC. So a lot of preflop advice here applies primarily to people who are grinding 1/2 somewhere in Iowa, not action games in touristy areas.

Also players on this forum tend to play pretty straightforward post flop and assume you need to make a hand to be profitable. In reality equities run pretty close in poker and with good hand reading, playing in position, a lot of hands can be played profitably even if they don't get to showdown.

Most of the posters in this forum are only playing their hands from the perspective of how much value does this hand potentially have in X situation. There are many scenarios and table dynamics that are more important than the potential value of a hand. With that in mind, identify those situations, and just ignore the, "fold pre" comments.

But yes, the, "fold pre" response in this forum is tiresome and far far overused. So just ignore it when it is obviously not practical.

lol "tired of folding preflop", and this is what makes the games so good