A structured Guide to Master Cash Game Preflop Strategies
Preflop strategies contain a lot of nodes, spots, situations and decisions. It seems daunting to learn them all and the process can feel like pounding against a wall that just won’t give way. This isn’t surprising either. You don’t want to learn every possible chess move either, but concepts. You start with opening principles, then, once you got those down, you look deeper into specific openings. Applying those same principles to the world of poker, we can make the process of mastering preflop strategies more manageable and enjoyable.
Principles for Effective Learning
1. Training should be challenging but not overwhelming
Athletes are training in a very specific way to reach their goals. They challenge their bodies, but they don’t overwhelm them. Trying to go directly for the marathon without any training would be suicidal and we would fail horribly. Instead, we would be building up muscle and stamina by training just out of our comfort zone, but not to the point where our body breaks down.
The same principles apply to our brain. When we learn something new, we should always try to be a bit uncomfortable, but not to the point where we are completely overwhelmed and fall back into a guessing game. We want to structure our study sessions to be slightly exhausting, but it should not feel like we are hitting a brick wall.
2. Focus on one Spot at a time
When we are learning a new preflop strategy, we should focus on one spot at a time. We always aim to cover all spots, but not to try to learn all spots at once. This is a recipe for forming a convoluted mess of unrelated ranges and nodes in our head, that we won’t be able to make any sense of. Instead, we use the technique of drawing bigger and bigger circles. We focus on one spot, then we extend those concepts to another spot, we reverse positions to gain an understanding for the opposing side, extend again, reverse it again. Implementing this strategy, we start to recognize patterns which we can then apply to different spots. This way we form a semantically connected network of game nodes that interact with each other, from the smallest circles to the whole strategy.
So, in order to get started, we pick a few spots for each studying session, give ourselves about 15-20 minutes for each spot and really focus in on the given scenarios. It will amaze you on how quickly you gain more confidence at your preflop play.
3. Form a Habit
If we want to succeed at the game of poker, consistency is key. Studying daily will produce great results in no time, but overwhelming ourselves will cause the opposite effect. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint. We won’t master poker in two weeks nor in two months. So for us to be successful, we need to pace ourselves in order to stay motivated.
This is where creating a routine really becomes the silver bullet. We don’t have to study daily, but it helps to set fixed time slots spread out during the week, where we can fully concentrate on our game.
Another vital concept is accounting for recovery. If we study 18 hours a day every day, chances are we are getting tired of it by the end of the first week. Giving our mind time to rest and to process all that new information will help us in staying motivated and keeping a clear head.
We’ll find that giving ourselves recovery periods is as impactful to our success as is studying.
4. Formulate a Goal
Setting goals and tracking them is something that is often very much overlooked when learning something new. Limp Lab has a streak system to keep you going, and we have a level system for the drills to keep us motivated. Still, it’s advisable that we set yourself a clear goal like “I want to get to 96% accuracy over 300 hands”, “I stick to my study plan for two weeks” or “I want to reach level 10 in this drill”.
Goals can be very personal, there is no right or wrong here, but remember the first principle: Studying should be challenging, so don’t set your goals too low, or they will hinder your progress.
We do recommend that you set Level goals for the drills presented in this article, though. It’s the easiest metric, since Limp Lab tracks it for you. We think Level 25 is a decent stage to claim proficiency at the drill.
We created over 20 drills for this guide and while you can directly import them into your Limp Lab account, these concepts apply to any preflop range training software. Choose whatever fits your needs.
Now let’s get into the drills!
Guidelines for Drill Training
Start with low volume
In the spirit of ”don’t overwhelm yourself”, keep the volume of hands per drill relatively low. We suggest to start out with 50 hands per drill and then go through the made mistakes before starting the next drill.
Start in Learning Mode
If your range trainer has a learning mode like Limp Lab, use it in the first few sessions. This way you’ll familiarize yourself with your ranges quicker, especially if you focus in on specific spots.
Take your time
Don’t rush your decisions if you are unsure. This is not a competition about the fastest fold or open. You want to master your ranges, not “feel” them. Rushing leads to laziness, which leads to mediocre results. While the goal is to eventually know every spot by heart, you cannot expect this to happen instantly.
Take regular breaks
Just get up and take a short stroll through your apartment, do the dishes, etc. to clear your mind. Then come back and take another stab at it. You’ll feel fresher and more concentrated when taking regular breaks.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint!
We cannot stress this enough! You won’t fly through these drills in a week. This is a long term training plan, so again: Do not overwhelm yourself!
Filter your starting hands
There will be spots where you know you want to fold most of the possible starting hands. Some range trainers let you customize your hands. Use it to filter out all the trash hands that aren’t even close to a tough decision for you.
The Five Levels to Master Preflop Strategies
Level 1: Opening and Defending
We have to start somewhere and a solid preflop foundation goes a very long way. And the first spot beginners mess up constantly is which hands to open with and which to fold when the action folds to us. Learning optimal RFI (Raise First In) ranges will put us ahead of a decent chunk of the competition, especially in lower stakes.
We recommend that you do these drills in repetitive order, i.e. 20 minutes first drill, 20 minutes second drill, then 20 minutes first drill again. The next day you can reverse it, second drill, first drill, second drill, until you reach your set goals for each spot.
- 1.1 Preflop Open: IP
- 1.2 Preflop Open: SB
- 1.3 BB Defense vs CO/BTN Open
- 1.4 BTN vs CO Open
- 1.5 BB Defense vs UTG/HJ Open
- 1.6 BTN vs UTG/HJ Open
We’ll spend quite some time at this level, even more so when we are just starting out. But this shouldn’t bring our spirits down. Each step in this level is vitally important for any further studies. And each mastered drill will drastically reduce our preflop blunders and therefore cut down our losses.
If we don’t have the basics down, we won’t win at the tables! Just like we won’t win a game of chess if we don’t know how to move the pieces. Our opening ranges are our chess pieces we go into battle with.
Also note that we are taking very small steps. There are no complicated drills where we act against 3 bets, because we want to get excellent at SRPs or Single Raised Pots first and in them find spots where we can 3 bet ourselves.
Level 2: Extending our Circles
- 2.1 BB Defense vs SB Open
- 2.2 SB vs CO/BTN Open
- 2.3 BTN vs Open
- 2.4 HJ/CO vs UTG/HJ Open
- 2.5 BTN vs SB/BB 3-Bet
- 2.6 UTG vs SB/BB 3-Bet
- 2.7 UTG vs CO/BTN 3-Bet
This level is all about continuing ranges when our opponents don’t just fold, and we are also looking to extend on our previous gained knowledge. We extend on our previous spots and take on some new perspectives. For example, in the first level we looked at what to do in the BTN against a CO open, now we expand this to all the previous positions we can be up against. We explore spots where we are up against 3 bets, and we dive deeper into blind stealing and defending.
Just like the first level, this will take quite some time to master, but once we went through all drills, we’ll be way ahead of most of our competition.
Level 3: Tougher Spots
Now that we have the basics down, we go a bit further and bring together all 3 bet pot spots. While three drills seem to be very little compared to the first two levels, don’t fool yourself into thinking this is an easy level to master.
Once we have these down, we are a real tough opponent to face preflop.
Level 4: The Deep Nodes
Arguably the hardest spots are found in this level. We find squeezes, heads up spots and multiway pots here and every single spot demands a good portion of our stack. Playing perfect here will not only save us a lot of money, but also win us a lot.
Level 5: Bringing it all together
All the glory awaits in the last drill. If we master this drill, we mastered our preflop strategy. Congratulations to us, our opponents can’t get us at the preflop stage. We now eliminated one of the four stages of no limit holdem (preflop, flop, turn, river) where we will either outplay or be on par all of our opponents.
If you made it this far, please let us know in our discord! We love to see the progress our users are making!