Primum Non Nocere, Part 1

For those of you who have studied Latin, pat yourself on the back – you can now laugh at anyone who’s told you that you would never use it. For everyone else, I’ll begin with this maxim: Preflop compounds postflop.

This means that a seemingly minor (and thus inexpensive) mistake made preflop grows exponentially postflop.

Example:

It’s folded around to you on the button. You pick up AJo and raise. The button folds and the SB re-raises you. The SB has been active and you see that he 3-bets 8% of hands over a 250 hand sample. You are both sitting on roughly 100BB’s, and you figure that AJo plays ok vs. that range and that you’ll be in position postflop, and thus be able to control the action. You make the call.

The pot now stands at 20 BB’s.

The flop comes QJ5r. The SB leads for 65% pot and you make the call with your mid-pair.

The pot now stands at 46 BB’s.

The turn is a 9 putting a flush draw out there. The SB leads again for a little less than 60% pot. You reason that he could have picked up a flush draw which he is now double barreling and maybe doing it with AK to try to push you off a mid-pair. You call again.

The pot now stands at 100 BB’s.

The river is a 2 and the flush draw misses. Villain shoves his remaining 50 BB’s and you sit there getting 3-1 on your money wondering if you are pot committed and whether villain is 3-barrell bluffing his AKo or missed backdoor flush draw. Life sucks.

You: "LOL - this hand was played badly and I would never be in this spot."
Me: "Liar - you've been in spots like this."

All of us have found ourselves in a similar hand where we make a questionable preflop call and somehow come up with all sorts of reasons to call the flop, turn, and rivers. You end up posting the hand on the forums and get the two line reply: Fold preflop.

This is going to be the topic of this article and the meaning behind Primum Non Nocere: First, do no harm. It is a fundamental principle in medical ethics which teaches young medical students that sometimes it is better to do nothing than to try something which could potentially do more harm than good. You should treat your preflop game in the same fashion.

What will follow will be a general guide to preflop play for 25NL and below tweaked by wishiewish (who I've realized is better at poker than I am ATM) and myself (who is better at explaining and organizing than he is). It's designed to maximize your EV vs. a pool of relative unknowns (which seems to be the case when you are playing 25NL and below). Many of you will find this unsurprisingly bland and boring, but hopefully the discussion and explanations will be helpful.

Some Assumptions: No major history, no sick reads, and ~100BB stacks vs. most villains. No more than 2 short stacks at your table.

(will actually do both UTG and MP in the morning ... tired now)

If the blind has been 3betting a lot why couldn't we flat with AJo? Then whats the cutoff point, AQo? What's the difference between AJo and AQo? In reality I don't see much difference, you're only dominated by JJ+. as opposed to AQo where you're dominated by QQ+.

I think flatting pre is fine, and flat the flop and fold the turn.

Under The Gun (UTG)

This position should be fairly easy to play since you are almost always guaranteed to play out of position postflop. I’ll present the general opening range there and discuss when to deviate from it.

Default UTG raising range: 22+, ATs+, AJ+, KJs+, KQo (11.3% of hands)



You'll notice two major omissions from this: Suited connectors and suited aces. You see those being raise quite a bit in the mid stakes and high stakes games, but a lot of that is for the sake of having a more balanced game. Balance is something we are not at all concern with at 25NL and below simply because regulars won't play with you long enough (you move up or they move up) to exploit your lack of balance. But specifically ...

Why omit suited aces lower than ATs?

You’ll often find yourself where you are dominated since a lot of people will call preflop in position with A8 – AJ type hands. You won't flop a flush draw often enough to make this profitable, and most often you'll find yourself with a really weak pair or a top pair with no kicker and those are tough to play.

What about suited connectors?

They look sexy, but you will be OOP almost always and flop weak, one-pair type hands, or a pair + draw which will cause you to bleed money. You might also find yourself in a multi-way pot with a dominated draw, and those are very tough to play OOP.

Exception to the Rule # 1:

If you have a good read on the table to where:

A) MP, CO, and BTN don’t 3-bet much, fold a lot to your UTG raises.
B) SB and/or BB are playing too many hands and pay off light.
C) You are 170+ BB's deep with the SB and/or BB.

In this case, you can add some suited connectors (78s -QJs) and suited aces.

Dealing with 3-bets:

What to do if you are facing a standard sized 3-bet from MP - BTN?

If you have no read on the player or less than 20 hands on them (and VPIP < 30% and a PFR reasonably close):

• KK+: 4-bet for value
• QQ, AK: 4-bet (to start developing an aggressive image). If they fold, they will feel bad because people don’t like folding. Even if you get it in and you were behind, you start getting information which you can then use for the future.
• Fold everything else to a standard 3-bet size.

Once you develop a read (over 500 hands) and see that someone is 3-betting less than 3% of hands:

• KK+: 4-bet for value
• QQ, AK: These don’t fare that well vs. their 3-betting range of your UTG open, so just give it up and fold it.

What to do if you are facing a standard sized 3-bet from the SB or BB?

If you have no read on the player or less than 20 hands on them (and VPIP < 30% and a PFR reasonably close)

• KK+: 4-bet for value
• QQ, AK: Flat, play Positionally

Once you develop a read (over 500 hands) and see that someone is 3-betting less than 3% of hands.

• KK+: 4-bet for value
• 22 - QQ, AK: We should expect them to play pretty face up and we can often get to showdown vs. AK and be able to fold vs. KK+.

Exception to the Rule # 2:

If you are 200 BB’s deep vs. someone, call any pocket pair to a 3-bet other than KK+ (this is in position - OOP, still fold to a normal sized 3-bet - you are just not likely to get paid off often enough when you hit your set).

What if you have someone at your table who is getting out of line with 3-bets (10%+)?

Simply tighten up your UTG range and evaluate whether the table will be profitable. A recommended tighter UTG range of 88+, AJs+, AQ+, KQs (6.2% of hands):



Note: As you can see, this is a fairly exploitable approach to UTG play, but who cares? The number of players who will exploit you at 25NL and below is minuscule.

q

OP has a point.

qft, some people need to read this

1. 44
2. K7s
3. KK

Easy game.

3betting Kxs OTB is something I love doing. We can't call with it because it isn't good enough (dominated a lot etc) to play profitably even with position, but it is good to 3bet with because it contains a K blocker and the times we hit our K we very often have the best hand. (same can be said for Qxs) i.e. A very small %age of a players 3bet calling range contains a K (KQs, KQo maybe, AK/KK 4bets).

Plus it's soooted so adds like 2-3% equity.

Amazing thread verneer, thanks for doing this!

Would you ever advocate not 4betting KK+ ip? To me it seems that with our kind of imagine we would get a ton of folds in general whereas we could pick up a cbet in a 3bet pot from our opponent quite often if we just flat.
What do we do if an Ace hits and we're holding KK though?

This thread is exactly what I've been needing.. well besides a sweat session, which wont happen on my crappy net

nice thread!!

Originally Posted by verneer
Balance is something we are not at all concern with at 25NL and below simply because regulars won't play with you long enough (you move up or they move up) to exploit your lack of balance.



heh, what is the "balance" ?

A Balanced Range

Let's say that you the only time you 3-bet a hand is when you are holding AA or KK. Well ... if someone knows this about you, it's really easy to play when you three bet them. They call if they have the odds to set-mine and 4-bet you with AA. Every other time they fold.

Unbalanced Range: {AA, KK} = 100% value

This is an unbalanced range because all your 3-bets are strictly for value. What about a balanced range?

Well ... there are 6 combinations of AA and 6 combinations of KK. So your range of {AA, KK} is composed of 12 total hand combinations.

Let's balance that with 12 hand combinations of bluffs. For example, let's now also 3-bet 97s, 86s, and 75s. There are 4 combinations of each of those for a total of 12 hand combinations.

Balanced Range: {AA, KK, 79s, 68s, 57s} = 50% value, 50% bluffs

Now you are in theory much harder to play against because the opponent does know if you are bluffing or re-raising for value.

Why you shouldn't worry about balance at the micros:

First of all, opponents call without the right odds all the time, so even if your 3-betting range is strictly for value, they will still call with much worse hands and pay you off.

Secondly, to understand a player's ranges you need to have a large (2K+) sample on them and there is so little stability among the micro player pool that this doesn't happen often.

Finally, even if someone has a large hand sample on you, they might not be able to figure out what your ranges are from the numbers they see.

Thank you verneer

Balancing for the sake of balance is definitely silly at micros and is even silly at SSNL/MSNL (according to my coach) because what's the point of balancing your range if your opponents aren't adjusting to you?

However I believe some things can be done that add to your win rate that could be classed as 'balancing' but are actually done because they're profitable. Such as squeezing with a more marginal hand (Axo for example) because it's just printing money and gets a ton of respect (if done against the correct opponents).

We're not squeezing with Axo because it balances when we do it with AA but simply because the move itself is +EV.

Thanks Verneer. Another great thread. The UTG range is interesting.
I wonder why I quite often leave ATs AJo KJs out of my UTG range but add QJs JTs A4s into it. I'm probably doing something wrong but QJs is just so much prettier than AJo or KJs.

I don't know if you are saying this tongue-in-cheek or not, but what you said is a really important to digest.

45 is also a very good looking hand. So is 68. This is why people don't like folding them preflop, even to a 3-bet.

People remember all the times they call a 3-bet with those hands and hit a flush, trips, or straight. They forget all the other times (most other times) when they've hit nothing and slowly bled money. Poker players have an incredibly selective memory.

listen to him imo

Oh I have . Re-reading my post I guess the 2nd half could come across as "But I do it anyway because it prints money", but my coach actually showed me the power of squeezing so that's advocated by him too :P

Well a bit tongue in cheek but I do fold AJo sometimes UTG but open QJs always.
I feel like the potential to make straight and flushdraws outweighs the slightly worse pair value. Against most people I'm not happy trying to get 3 sreets of value when I make TP with AJo anyway.

Is it really bad logic? Maybe I should remove QJs from my automatic open range.

I don't see how your post is in any way contradictory. Did I miss something?

Grunching

1. I would say pairs probably 88 and lower most the time probably call from the btn and don't 3 not a 100% as he might 3bet some of the time vs a CO open. But for the most part these are hands you want to take a flop with for there implied vaule not there pre flop edge vs the villans range as it is pretty close to 50/50 most the time at best. And if your 3 betting them your going to be getting 4 bet and forced to fold by the hands that you have the best chance of stacking when you flop your set.

2. generally here would be suited connectors maybe even some one gappers. In a 3 bet pot it is going to be really easy to play these hands post flop or when you get 4 bet there easy to fold. Basically your hands that are going ot be str8 forward to play. Where the hands in group one can be really dicey is 3bet pot. And these hands OOP post flop are going to be awful tricky a lot of the time and tough to play profitablly.

3. Hands in both ranges are probably QQ+ AK, just really strong hands your always raising for vaule.

Nope just me paranoid and defending myself without anyone questioning me!

I haven't commented on this yet so I thought I would. I think it's a good example of when you can take the right theory and apply it incorrectly. When I say this I don't mean to say that AJo plays well against an 8% 3bet range (because it doesn't really, he's rarely 3betting AT as much as he's 3betting 78s etc), but rather that SB is 3betting quite often so we're looking for a way to counter.

This is a perfect spot to 4bet bluff imo. Both the A and J (although to a lesser extent) are good blockers and we're at the top of our folding range. Here this turns from getting into complicated situations postflop by flatting the 3bet to one that shows immediate gain and makes our decisions fair less complicated.

he is gonna cbet cards that hit us.
and his QJs, JTs, KJ are also dominated.

you cant 4bet bluff with AJ vs an agressive players. you will get good odds to make the call vs his shove.

This stood out to me. You 3bet SCs on the BTN?

The only reason imo for doing this is if there is a squeeze happy player in the blinds, as it stops you from getting squeezed (obv).

Normally I flat SCs OTB as I like to have a high Stack to Pot ratio. We have position and should be able to win our fair share of pots post flop.