No Limit Hold’em Starting Hands December 19, 2006
Posted by yorkshirepuddings in Cash game, Live Poker, Online Poker, Strategy.6 comments
One of the first questions people ask when they start playing Texas Hold’em is usually what starting hands to play before the flop. Fixed Limit (FL) Hold’em is relatively easy to plot a table for due to the betting structure etc and if anybody wants an Excel spreadsheet with the recommended starting hands for Early position, Middle Position, Late position and from the Blinds (taken from a best selling Poker Strategy book) post a comment (I’ll respond via email to you and delete your comment).
Anyway, back to No Limit (NL)! NLHE is a totally different beast from FLHE for reasons that are so obvious they don’t need explaining here and if you need them explaining then I think you need to find yourself a new game 
Hands that are basically unplayable in certain positions in FLHE become profitable in NLHE as you have the potential to win your opponents entire stack, which could be 100xBB or more, where as in FLHE the most you can expect to win from your opponent is 16xBB (assuming a cap of 4 bets on each street). So hands like T9s can become very profitable in the right situations, as can small pocket pairs. In FLHE in Middle Position (MP) I’d want at least 2 maybe 3 limpers in front of me before I called preflop with say 55 but in NLHE I’d be quite happy to limp with these even first to act, Under The Gun (UTG) if the table wasn’t being overly aggressive as if I flop a set I have the potential to win a huge pot. I’d much rather have QJs than A8o even though A8o could win the pot without having to improve along the way. To get things under way I’ll list hands into 4 (A to D) categories and then in a separate post I’ll list which hands are profitable in certain situations and in each of the positions of the table. These are entirely meant for NLHE cash games and not tournament play as such.
A-listed hands
These are hands that you should be happy to see dealt to you preflop and as a general rule play well in any position when playing deep stack (100xBB) NLHE. They include:
- Any Pocket Pair
- Any Suited Ace
- Suited connectors from KQs down to 54s
B-listed hands
These hands are weaker than the hands listed but they are still very often playable in deep stack NLHE games. These category includes:
- Any two suited cards Jack or higher
- 1 gapped suited connectors from QTs down to 53s
C-listed hands
As expected, these hands are weaker still but are still playable in the right situations, usually with weak opponents and being in position. This category includes:
- Suited Kings
- 2 unsuited cards Ten or higher
- 2 gapped suited connectors from Q9s down to 52s
- Unsuited connectors from T9o down to 54o
D-listed hands
Judging by the poor hands in list C you’d be surprised to find another category of hands. This category contains any hand not mentioned in the above lists. That is not to say never play these hands but it’s very likely you’ll be just throwing your cash away if you do. If you’re wanting to play these hands use them for stone cold bluffs, I mean what would you expect a hand like 84o beat, seriously?
It would be very easy to say “Always raise with JJ” etc but there are so many variables in NLHE it is untrue. Over the next post or two I’ll list what hands are recommended from Early position (EP), Middle Position (MP), Late Position (LP) and the dreaded blinds! They will be broken down into the following common situations:
- You are the first to enter the pot
- There is one limper in the pot in front of you
- There are at least 2 limpers in the pot in front of you
- There has been a raise in front of you but no callers
- There has been a raise in front of you and there is at least 1 caller
- There has been a raise met by a re-raise in front of you
That should cover everything I believe. Just so I don’t get told off the information will be based on information publish in No Limit Hold’em: Theory and Practice by David Sklansky and Ed Miller, which I strongly recommend to anyone wanting to play NLHE cash games.
Hope this will become helpful for you! 
Full Ring Experiment December 19, 2006
Posted by yorkshirepuddings in Cash game, Online Poker, Other interesting links, Poker, Poker Sites.5 comments
I received an email yesterday from Cadmunkey telling me he was going to hit some cash games and that he’d also listened to an article by Daniel Negreanu with regards to beating the micro stakes NL cash games. I have utmost respect for Negreanu as I think he’s a tremendous player who seems to have an insane ability to read hands. One hand that stands out is in Harrington On Hold’em Volume 3 where he lays down a flopped straight after reading Sammy Farha, correctly, for a flush after Farha called a raise and reraise preflop with 9s2s! Anyway, Negreanu stated that if he were to play micro stakes poker he’d avoid 6-max and play Full Ring (9 or 10 man) as it’s the only way to beat the rake and make a consistent profit at these stakes! So as I am not on any sort of challenge at the minute and am just donking around I think I’ll give the full ring games a go on Full Tilt Poker and I think Mr Munkey is going to do the same also.
I always used to play full ring (FR) when I played FLHE and then when I made the switch to NLHE I stuck with ful ring. I found it easier and is where I made a nice little bit of cash, especially over at Sun Poker before the traffic dried up worse than Gandhi’s sandals! But all the blogs I was reading seemed to be playing 6-max and were, seemingly, tearing it up. Cadmunkey started playing it too and was enjoying some success so I gave it a go and got stung and couldn’t get my head around it. I did some research into it and started to play 6-max once more and really enjoyed the action and the donkeys it attracted and eventually started to turn a profit.
I’ll give FR games until the end of the year to see how I shape up then I will decide what I’m going to play on January 1st. The one thing that will hit me is the change of pace. I expect only 50-65 hands an hour and the tables to be more TAG than the 6-max games although all games at FR NL10 are more than likely going to be Weak-Tight. When playing FR I try to run around 20/10/2 which is a happy medium and comfortable to play and means I can throw some speculative hands into the mix, especially if we’re all sat with 100xBB stacks. I’m going to try to stick to ABC poker at these stakes and not get too fancy because the retards just do not understand but I’m also going to put more emphasis on positional poker and try out a few things based purely on position and players.
I’ve dug out my No Limit Hold’em: Theory And Practice by David Sklansky and Ed Miller to flick through on the commute to work. An awful lot of the book is for playing at much higher stakes but the majority of the concepts can be utilised at what ever stakes you play as it’s all about making +EV moves at the right times. My preflop game is pretty good, if I may say so myself, but I know some new players struggle with hand selection when they first start playing NL so I’ll share some basic preflop starting hands over the next couple of posts, mostly taken from the aforementioned book.
No pokery played last night as I went to Mrs Puddings house for Pizza (Turtle Food) and to help decorate her Christmas tree and we watched the corny, but very entertaining Starship Troopers! Sad I know but I really want to see number two now! Should get some play in tonight so will be able to report back in the morning with some hands of interest and hopefully stories of huge profits! I also bought my first packet of fags for 2.5 years yesterday as I’ve really been fancying a smoke recently, going to be a good lad though and knock it on the head because I don’t want to get back into the habit of smoking!
As always, thanks for checking in! 
As Samuel Jackson would say….. December 19, 2006
Posted by yorkshirepuddings in Random.add a comment
….I’m sick of this mother fucking spam on this mother fucking blog! Seems to have gone crazy in the past week!
Thank God for Akismet! 
