Preflop Strategies in No-Limit Hold’em
Preflop betting is crucial in tournament no-limit hold’em. Early on in a tournament, many good players like to limp in preflop often. They will limp in from late, middle, or even early position with a wide variety of hands, both weak and strong. When limping in with a weak hand preflop, the limper is intending to see a flop cheaply, with the hope of the weak hand developing into a big hand or big draw on the flop. Also, especially depending on what position the limper came in from, the hand that he flops could be very deceptive. For example, let’s say a player limps in from early position with the 4hearts 3hearts and several players limp in behind him. The flop comes down A-5-2 rainbow, giving the early-position limper the nut straight. Now, if any of his opponents make a set or two pair with this board, they will often lose lots of chips or even go broke, since it is so difficult to put the early-position limper on the straight, given where he limped in from. Now, this is an extreme example, since it is very rare that you will flop the nut straight with the 4hearts 3hearts. However, just flopping a draw with this hand can win you lots of chips. A flop like K-5-2 can be very profitable if you can draw cheaply to the nut straight, because when you hit it, you are very likely to get paid off, since it is a very deceptive hand. If a 6 comes off, anyone with a big king or better will still like his hand, and if an ace comes off and someone makes aces up, you may be able to bust him with your straight.
A very important part of limping is doing so with not only your weaker hands, like the 4hearts 3hearts, but also your stronger hands, like aces, kings, queens, and A-K suited. If you always limp only with junk and raise with your premium hands, good players will quickly pick up on this and will often come after you when you limp. When you limp, they will often raise preflop to pressure you into folding your weak hand. However, when you also limp with bigger hands and they raise your limp, you can either smooth-call and try to trap them on the flop or reraise preflop to put the pressure back on them. Once you show that you are capable of limping with big hands, good players will notice it and will not try to bully your limp nearly as often.
Some players prefer to always or almost always come in with a raise preflop if they are first to act. This is a fine strategy, although I think that at the highest levels of poker, one must be able to both limp and raise preflop to maximize success. When players raise preflop, they generally raise between two and four tim es the big blind. One of the arts to …
