awesome
Steve has stated when our position improves, we play more hands and we raise them more often. We look for opportunities to play a pot cheaply with speculative hands when we are likely to have good post-flop position. We don’t call pre-flop raises lightly, but we do try to isolate/steal from the button with a very wide range. Check out Steve's latest article on preflop strategy.
Do you have any observations of your own? or is Steve right on the money?
Cash Game Strategy: Pre-flop Raising from Late Position and the Button
Hi there Shells! Good morning, how you doing? Thank you for sharing this amazing article with the CardsChat community!
I believe Steve is right on the money! I don't play Vegas, I am just a small-slow student of the micros, but I have some observations here.
What Steve states is the core and soul of a good
poker game: playing in position. Even at the micro stackes (2 NLHE to 10 NLHE mostly), we can observe and use the secret powers of position.
Even when we are running very bad during a week, with a huge downswing, if we look to our profits by position using HM2's Leak Buster by position, or a similar software, we can easily observe that we are +EV from the Cut-Off and the Button.
What Steve says about not calling too much is even more true when it comes to Cash games: when we are playing Cash Games we almost never call, out of position specially.
My personal gameplan is to never call down from the SB: my strategy from the SB position is either 3bet or fold 99% of times.
I am calling from SB in a cash game when I have ludicrous pot
odds and I know I am going to face players with a weak postflop perception, even so, I can fold and not flat my SB range most of times, because when we do flat from SB, our range becomes too obvious for our opponents to explore our game. When we flat from SB, most of times our range is capped, which makes the reading much easier for opponents, and besides that we will play out of position.
Personally, I don't love calling too much from any position when I am playing cash games. Except some cases where, for instance, I am hero in the MP with 10-15% range and I see a recreational player in the SB or BB, than, instead of 3betting UTG's raisor, I am just calling down to induce the weak player of the SB or BB to call for odds.
The same range I use for calling I use for 3bet so we will not see too many awkward spots with hero 3betting pocket 6's or pocket 2's, or JTo, lol.
Steve is right, calling preflop raises is a great leak in cash games. We must have a very good reason for doing so, otherwise it is the standard 3bet preflop. I will call from MP, CO and BTN (vs raisor) when I see a player who folds too much to 3bet, something like 55% of fold 3bet preflop or more.
I do that, because it doesn't make any sense for when we have 5% of range to make some spewy player oop to fold its trashes. If I 3bet a player who folds to much to 3bet preflop, and let's assume I have AKs, AQs, AJs, ATs, AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, KQs, KJs, the player is gonna fold a lot and then I will not make money with the top of my range.
But, as a rule of thumb we are 3betting most of times in position, either for value or for
bluff.
Very good article indeed! Thank you very much Shells! Respect always and good game and good luck at the tables!
Regards;
Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa
