Hello,

Not a hand history thread but more of a general strategy question.

After reading through these posts most of the summer many of the threads encourage to play a tighter preflop range, with many posters suggesting to either open raise, or to fold many of their holdings. My main question is what to do with hands like AJ-Axs, AJ-A9of, KQ-J10 and middle pocket pairs 88-JJ.

My general strategy is to mainly limp/call with the hands listed above preflop, and evaluate postflop. If I am late position I am most likely opening with AJ-A10 suited, and 10-JJ. Is this too tight/passive?

Obviously the table dynamics matter, if the table is aggressive I usually tighten up, and if it is passive, I'll open up more.

Would love to hear thoughts, also apologize if this has been covered already, or is not really a forum worthy post.

How deep is the average stack?

What percentage of pots are being opened preflop? How many callers?

How skillful versus clueless are your opponents?

GconditionsareimportantG

I'd say stack is between $150-250 in the average 1/2 or 1/3 game.

In regards to this activity lets say its 9 handed, opens are approximately occurring 2-3 times per orbit. The 3bet pre happens maybe 1 time per orbit.

Lets say the table is the average 'rec' player, with maybe 4 TAG players, hero, one LAG, one nit, two weaker players.

Just approaching this from a 1/3 NL perspective, if everyone is at $150 - $250 then that is a pretty short game. Shortstacks mean tightening *way up* due to stack committing RIO issues / getting in too big of a percentage of your stack preflop with the worse hand / devastating effect of rake at these depths. You should be limping to call a raise (at least a normal quite sizeable raise of 5x - 7x) with almost nothing (with the possible exception of overcalling a bunch of calls ~closing the action with mostly just ~nutmaking hands).

I have a very limpy-with-big-hands strategy but that is a style thing and you're of course free to raise big hands. But at these stack depths you really can't afford to be getting too out-of-line too early (i.e. a nitty raising range, especially OOP, and perhaps only expanding that when the correct situation arises in LP).

GimoG

This is way too generic of a question to really get into in a thread. There are lots of preflop charts out there. Upswing Poker has some good ones. They make nice training wheels for new players who are learning the game. After you have more experience you'll learn when and how to adjust, but when you are first getting started, just memorizing a basic preflop strategy is probably the way to go.

That's what I did when I first started playing. It gets you in the game and playing without making any huge mistakes. As you are just getting started, it's best to play a bit tighter. You're a lot less likely to make stack losing mistake with tighter play. People who play super tight still manage to beat these games. Then, once you've gotten some notches on your belt, you can start to open up your game as you get comfortable adding hands.