Pre-flop hand selection charts

Hey gang,

Here is an attempt to quantify in chart form the pre-flop starting hands I tend to use. I've tried to segment it out into calling hands and raising hands to give a sense of the flavour of it. Basically it's a tight/aggressive strategy, raising 3-4x the BB with the raising hands and sneaking a few high potential/low probability hands where appropriate. Original source is an intrepretation of Harrington's chapter on pre-flop play in Book 1, though it's not 100% true to form.

Starting hands.JPG (http://www.cardschat.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1138&d=1154006830)

Anyway, this obviously doesn't capture all of the nuances of starting hand selection, but it's my best shot at putting it all on paper. Feedback welcome.

Thoughts?

You've left out 72os lol

IanT

I disagree you should raise preflop with ATo in late position with a few callers...

The difficulty with using a chart is that, if you stick to it rigidly, you become too predictable and observant opponents will get a pretty good read on you. I have my own charts but I use them only as a guide and try never to get too mechanical. The character of the opponents is every bit as important as the cards in your hand and a chart takes no account of this.

Also, for charts to be useful you need different ones for different types of game - Full-Table Ring Games, Short-Handed, SnGs, MTTs, each needs a different approach. SnGs are particularly difficult in this respect, because you must change gears as players are eliminated and the blinds rise, so you really need 3 or more charts for a workable strategy.

I`m not saying charts aren`t worthwhile, just that you can`t expect to reduce the complexities of Holdem to a single sheet of paper.

I agree. Another problem with this chart is that sometimes callers refers to multiple and sometimes to just one. If I'm in late position and there is just one caller, I likely don't call with a low suited connector (you don't get your odds). But as you say, if the entire table has called, I might not call raise with ATo either. Technically there should be separate tables for 1 caller, >1 callers, etc but I'm trying to break it down a bit.

Still, touche.

Absolutely! I use this as a guide to start with, then deviate depending on what I've done so far, what the table is doing, etc. The way I like to think about this is as an "anchor" -- if my play gets too far away from it (too tight, too loose, too passive) I refer to it and bring myself back a bit. Fair points.

I agree to an extent. This is obviously for a full table, or the early stages of a full table SNG. Personally, until I'm down to 3 handed, I still use similar starting hands here, only you loosen up automatically because as you eliminate players you eliminate the early and then middle positions. That's an over-simplification, but you know what I mean. I also tend to regard MTTs similarly to full table rings.

As for the blinds, well that's the "M" component of the strategy, and it's altogether different. This is just the starting hands chart, the default, the base-line from which I operate.

I probably should have been clearer. I'm not going to sit there just reading off this chart to decide what I do. But I'm trying to shore up my mechanics a little bit for my live game (I wouldn't have a chart in front of me at a live game, anyway) and I'm attempting to "formalize" what I do at the beginning of a full table game so that I can go from there. This is meant as a rough guide to basic hand selection, not an artificial intelligence that can play poker by itself.

I see we agree.

I always have a chart by my monitor, but I don`t necessarily look at it every hand. Its main value is as an anchor to remind me not to drift into playing too loose or too tight.

I guess my main concern was that inexperienced players reading this thread might think that the secret of winning poker is to follow the right chart. We both know it ain`t that easy.

Entirely true.

As I was mentioning on another thread, despite my experience and understanding of the game my performance in my live weekly game is just barely above average, and I think I can do better. So I was giving my game a tune-up today to see if I could shore things up a bit and play better.

there are a lot of times i will fold AQ to a raise, i dont think it's a definite call from MP or CO/Button at all. But it gets you a good feel for how to act. You have to adjust to a case by case basis. Some tables you should raise almost every hand from every position, and others you should adjust to the other end of the spectrum and play more passive. Just depends on your opponents.

i have folded AK to a raise and been right before.

Awesome...

Yeah AQ is dicey and dangerous. Fo' shizzle.

Nice chart. I think it works well to start and as you keep playing and reading some books you will develope that chart into something great.

You could probably have several asterix down to footnotes for many different situations.

Looks good so far.

early or late position just go all in, donk off all ur money to me, then have a mike matusow blow up and let us all enjoy.

Um... riiight

I must remember to look that up if i'm sat next to you