Hi everyone,

I was just wondering if anyone had any tips for learning preflop charts for low limit cash games please ? It all seems so overwhelming.

Thanks

Kris

To start off with, forget all the tables except the one where you are in early position and no one has raised. Raise everything the chart tells you to raise in all positions. Don't limp anything. If someone raises, 3 bet AA, KK, QQ, JJ and AK. Fold everything else. When you get comfortable, you can start adding in additional hands based on position.

And before someone whines, "but what about set mining," anyone struggling with the starting hands is most likely going to be losing money set mining.

There's a program called range manager that I use to input ranges in over and over again until they start to stick. It takes me a long time.

Also probably best to focus on only certain ranges at a time (facing RFI, unopened, etc.). It takes me a long time for them to start to stick.

Do this and then deposit 20 bucks on a poker site that offers "fast fold tables", like Zoom or Zone or whatever they're called now. This game type puts you on a new table every single hand, so you can just turbo play your range until it becomes muscle memory. When you fold you instantly get a new seat on a totally new table, so you can just be spamming fold fold fold fold raise fold fold fold fold raise. Get it?

Throw in AQ though and I could get behind this to start our with as far as the 3 betting goes. I have to disagree a little with only making EP opens from anywhere on the table. I think you just need to study some charts for raising first in. He needs to learn he shouldn't open KJo from UTG, but he should know it's alright from about the LJ/HJ.

Resist the urge to play like everyone else is playing and cold calling all sorts of suited connectors, gappers, etc. If you are only 3 betting or folding except in the BB where you can call you are doing alright.

Once you get more comfortable and maybe after you are able to study some postflop, I think you could add more standard 3bets. You can't go wrong with ATs+, KTs+, AQo+, JJ+ from just about any position. Next I would add A5s and from there just study charts.

Not sure what a simplified 4bet range would be. AA, KK, and AKs maybe?

I agree with Venice 1000%.


While he definitely needs to be learning all the standard opens from positions......if he's going to continue to play live low limit cash, using a utg starting range for all positions *until* he learns others and is comfortable......will keep him out of a ton of trouble. And except for the rare crushers, no one is going to notice.


Below is about the rough starting hand chart I recommend for beginners at LLSNL from all positions. No limping or overlimping. No cold calling except BB and sometimes BTN. JJ+ and AK/AQ for 3bets.

This range keeps you out of trouble and gives you a sampling of hands like suited connectors and suited wheel aces at a low frequency so you can get your feet wet playing most kinds of hands.

Obviously I completely disagree with the never limp/overlimp advice (as the method I utilizes has a pretty much 0% raising range in the HJ-), although I also totally understand there is more than one way to win at this game, but...

Raising first in in EP absolutely doesn't "keep you out of trouble", especially in loose games, and in fact often does the opposite. Experts will be able to navigate bloated handcuffing SPR pots OOP ok (so obviously they can do what they want), but taking a hard line with this advice to anyone else (especially to a perhaps noobish player who might not be the most competent postflop given that he is feeling "overwhelmed" by preflop charts) is very debatable, imo.

OP, imo, it isn't about hardcoded charts spat out by some computer. It is about putting yourself in positions that *you* feel comfortable in. And you'll have to figure that out for yourself cuz it isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. Honestly, if you're a noob, my recommendation would be to never build a bloated pot OOP preflop ever (unless you're sitting on a micro stack, and even then a LRR is likely still far better).

ETA: And having a closer look at that chart, man, that is *way* too loose for any noobish / beginner player and will be complete suicide. A3s? QTs? QTo half the time? From EP and perhaps even MP? Heck, I've got almost ~5700 hours of 1/3 NL under my belt and yet I don't even play half of those hands in EP cuz I doubt I can make them profitable. It may be optimal for an expert who has a good grasp on postflop, but a noobish player will get absolutely slaughtered with that range, imo.

Ggoodluck!G

Gobbledygeek,

I think Yogurt Daddy was offering his chart as a ROUGH chart strategy for all positions with the common sense understated assumption that the OP should play a little tighter than this from EP and a little looser than this from LP.

Yogurt Daddy understandably didn't want to spit out all the full ring charts for each and every position. The one chart that he shared is probably a basic outline (play tighter than that from EP and looser than that from LP).

This is a free poker forum, and I wouldn't expect Yogurt Daddy to spell out all the nuances. We shouldn't criticize him for trying to help out someone who asked for help.

IMHO, his preflop chart is a pretty reasonable rough outline if someone was only going to post one chart.

Obviously, a complete preflop strategy would have different charts for all positions. But we shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Instead, we should just say thank you to Yogurt Daddy.

While that could be the case, I don't think it was stressed enough (if at all?) how much tighter in EP/MP that a noobish player should be playing relative to this average chart.

Like literally a noobish player's EP range should not be that far off of something like TT+/AQ+. And in loose games which often see a preflop raise, he'd be far better off limp/reraising (shoving) those on a shortstack to eliminate difficult postflop decisions OOP. Not saying that is optimal for an expert by any means, but likely not too far off optimal for a noob / someone struggling with the game.

ETA: I guess the difficulty is tailoring the advice to different people who are at different points in their poker journey. But I'm tailoring mine based on OP's postcount and question.

Gnothatin',justsayin'G

GG,

I think you are misunderstanding Yogurt Daddy's perspective. He wants OP to use his rough chart outline to get his feet wet at playing some (not a lot) of marginal hands that he will need to know how to play to become a good player. Maybe Yogurt Daddy just wants OP to start off with some good fundamentals.

I don't know you well, but I would say that you are advocating WAY too nitty advice regardless of whether you have 5700 hours at 1/3 NL stakes. While I do think it is possible to be a winner by playing way too nitty, I don't think advocating for OP to play way too nitty is helpful to him in the long run because he will develop bad habits that may be really hard to reverse later on.

Yogurt Daddy is being a lot more helpful here by giving a simple outline for OP to take his first steps to becoming a good player in the long run.

Yogurt daddy’s chart is sorta reasonable but IMO it does include too many trouble offsuit hands that should only be opened in CO at the earliest: I would just fold JTo/QTo/KTo/QJo from all positions. Opening these hands in CO/BTN could be okay but only to steal blinds if it folds to us. Anyway at LLSNL there will almost always be limps in EP/MP so it is not really relevant to ever raise these hands in any actual game.

Also, there is no reason to open AJo and JTo at 50% frequency. Given AJo is a far superior hand just open AJo at 100% and JTo at 0%. Mixed strategies are way too complicated anyway and are not needed in most games.

I would also just fold ATo and KJo except in the last positions where I might iso-raise or overlimp.

When we have a negative skill edge and a negative position edge, we generally want flop SPR to be as low as possible. A low SPR reduces the number of decisions yet to be made as well as their magnitude relative to the size of the pot.

There may be nuance there. I've seen it argued that SPR of 13 OOP with one pair is trickier than 20 because people get less aggressive in the latter case. That's debatable.

Another way to control SPR when skill edge is negative it's to buy in short. Many will disagree with that suggestion. Imo and ime is a good way to build up confidence and skill, watching the game and playing very tight without giving up too much edge postflop.

Importantly though, the goal is to get to late street competency where the big money in big bet games resides. I strongly recommend if you do short stack, challenge yourself not to rack up after doubling through. At least play 2-3 orbits. Use the psychological freeroll of "playing with other people's money" (not really true!) to challenge yourself to learn more.

Truthfully most $1-3 opps are so straightforward on later streets that you probably won't get shredded anyway, but each of us must do what makes sense for our training budget.

(And don't anybody dare call it bankroll until you have a positive winrate.)

While all that may be the case (I have no doubt Yogurt's advice is well-intentioned), my key take is that the "long run" doesn't happen if you go busto out of the gate (which there is a very good chance of happening for a noob player starting out playing his chart verbatim from EP/MP). Nitty AF is a very good starting point for a noob player until they get their feet underneath them, imo.

Gagain,nothatin',justsayin'G

Underrated: Play for play chip money online as you learn preflop. You can immediately check if you got the hand right and get feedback. You get a lot more hands more quickly and play multiple tables.

If you can't beat play chip for a decent sample then you may not be ready for real money. I'd just be careful to not assume that people will play exactly the same as play money---a lot of the bad play gets toned down in spots even if it still exists in similar ways.

I know everyone loves to hate on GG..... and im gonna have to join this time too :P Advocating to only play JJ+ from UTG and to do so by shortstack jamming is such a waste of time and will build terrible fundamentals. For starters it's not even necessary to play that tight UTG. It's not like your opponents are only flatting with AQ+. Most live games just involved an entire table full of limpers so you're leaving tons of value by failing to raise pre. You want to talk about difficult hands to play OOP? Yeah try playing AQ from UTG vs 8 opponents in a limped pot. And if your strat is to just jam, great, you only get 1 chance to do that. Now you doubled up and have no idea how to play full stack poker, unless you're just going to rathole and be forced to sitout for an hour+ every hand. Hero will most certainly get felted multiple times using this strategy only to double up once. You need to win those big implied odds type pots you only get once every dozen sessions or so to help hedge all your smaller losses and whiffs. You're playing the exact opposite with a SS jam strat, winning lots of little pots and losing your stack in between.

It’s pretty obvious what I think of GG’s game.

But in this context, I would 100% agree with GG. If anything, I would go even further and recommend him folding everything in EP except QQ+ and play them with limp/re-raise.

Want to learn? Play every hand in LP by limping without looking at your cards pre. Ready to step up? Play the same way but raise instead.

Ready to be more advance? Do the same in MP+.

Master these situations and I guarantee you will be a LLSNL crusher in no time.

There are a lot of fallacies here; it's likely no one cares enough to make it worthwhile to disentangle them. I'm happy to move that discussion forward if it's of interest.

At any rate I explained above: I don't recommend beginners play short and then rack up and go home after doubling up. (Maybe that's ok their first couple of sessions.) Is anyone advocating that? Or is Javi's post rebutting a straw man?

Thinking about this more, I think shortcuts are overrated. You should just learn the charts. We shouldn't be teaching you to be a mega nit.

You can't really get around the fact that you have to understand preflop raises and positions.

Studying and doing a half decent job of sticking to preflop ranges, even when the rest of the table is not, is probably the easiest and biggest impact way you can make money in poker.

It is such an advantage to have hands like AK, AQ, AJ, KQs when you are supposed to have these hands and your opponents have hands like A6 and KJo when the absolutely shouldn't. You just have to take some time and study. If you are able to grasp a basic understanding of ranges and have the patience to just fold hands you should fold, you are like 60% of the way to crushing low stakes.

Having some sort of preflop trainer like GTO Wizard is nice, but honestly just taking time to study the charts is a huge step. Even if you just study the raise first in charts.

Then just play. It will make more sense as time goes by. After you play a spot and feel unsure if you made the right play, then you can go look it up later and see what the right choice was.

Things will click after a while. Like I can probably let go of AJo facing an early position open when I am in middle position, and I am definitely not calling 3bets from early to middle position when I have AJo, because I might be screwed even when I hit top pair.

my god is this the blind leading the blind here? My post is apparently filled with fallacies meanwhile we have someone advocating to play their hands straight up blind and the crowd cheers.

So here's what I'm critiquing. Maybe just one fallacy. Anyway:

• You assert that a net win at NLHE comes from fewer big winning hands that offset a greater number of slightly losing hands. This is generally true of all full ring poker, because multiway pots will pay better than even money, and HU pots never pay less than even money (except for rake).
• Many folks (not you) go astray by considering Hero's potential to cooler Villain for deep stacks, without considering that starting hands are dealt symmetrically, so that Villain is roughly equally likely to cooler Hero.
• But aha! it's not symmetrical if Hero has a skill advantage. Hero will lose less on second best hands (including bad folds) and make more when having the best hand (including successful bluffs). I take that as essential to the point you were making.
• That said... the whole damn point of this thread is advice for beginners!

If a beginner has enough $200 or $300 or $500 buyins to buy in for the max and figure things out, go for it! However I don't think it's pedagogically sound -- like an adult learning a new language in pure immersion, without any systematic study.

Beginner short stacking provides a more affordable way to learn fundamentals. Until you double up, you'll only be playing small SPRs, but you should be thinking about sound SPR theory as soon as you learn about it. Practice throwing away that T8s otb to a raise, and spend all that time cry-folding preflop thinking about what you'd do differently at 100 BB or more. Meanwhile you're learning severe discipline, which is absolutely bedrock to any advancement at poker.

As you get better preflop you'll get more double- and triple-ups. Don't rack up immediately! Start getting yourself into situations that frankly you don't know how to play. Discuss and learn from them.

Aside from infant language (completely different brain development from adults) is there any other pursuit where it's common to learn basic and advanced content at the same time?