5 Poker Tips for Playing Preflop | Upswing Poker Level-Up #52

This article is a transcription of the Level-Up Podcast, hosted by Upswing VP Mike Brady with poker pro Gary Blackwood. You can watch or listen to the entire episode via the links above or read on if you prefer a written version.

Mike Brady (00:00):

Ready to level up your preflop strategy. I’m Mike Brady alongside Scottish poker pro, Gary Blackwood.

Gary Blackwood (00:07):

Welcome to the podcast guys and girls. Today we’re going to talk about preflop. I’m going to give you five tips for plugging them leaks and becoming a preflop master.

Mike Brady (00:16):

We’re going to start with relatively basic tips that you may have heard before, and the advice will get more advanced as we go.

Gary Blackwood (00:24):

Let’s start with the most important tip that most of our viewers will ever hear on this podcast. Avoid defending too wide from the big blind versus a raise and multiple calls. That is not an exaggeration. This tip could save you thousands of big blinds in your life. It’s A, B, C, it’s a little boring. People don’t want to hear it, but it’s the truth. When you’re in the big blind and it goes raise, call, call, call. You are absolutely not in any way, shape or form priced in with any of the trashy hands you might think you are. If you’re the type of player who just shrugs and calls in this spot with ten four suited, nine seven offsuit, ace deuce offsuit, king five offsuit, the list goes on. You need to either quit poker immediately or tighten up from the big blind. It’s such a bleed to think that you are priced in this spot and to go ahead and call, especially playing live poker where the pre flop raises can be three big blinds, four big blinds, even five big blinds. It’s kind of boring, but tighter is better. Hands like suited kings, suited aces, pocket threes, six four suited totally fine, but the semi-trashy hands and the trashy hands especially, let them go, save a few big blinds, save more big blinds postflop and plug that leak immediately.

Mike Brady (01:42):

You really want to focus on having hands with great playability, particularly in multi-way pots when you’re in these raise call, call, call scenarios before the flop from the big blind. Gary, what do you got for tip number two?

Gary Blackwood (01:57):

Let’s continue with looking at the big blind right now. When a player raises and the action folds to you, don’t three bet with only premium hands. For this spot, we’ll assume that we’re playing against a good thinking player and not a tight recreational player or a passive player or a calling station or anything like that. We’ll look at playing versus a button raise first of all, using Lucid GTO to see what types of hands we want to three bet. Some obvious three bet bluffs in there like ace five suited and Queen ten suited, but look at all the types of hands like jack five suited, ten seven suited, ten eight suited is virtually a pure three bet. Even hands like ace four offsuit, king three suited, the list goes on. These are really important because our opponent is raising around 45% of hands, and when we three bet we are making them fold around 60% of the time.

(02:45):

That’s really quite a lot of folds that we’re generating just by three betting correctly. If you have king three suited and you’re making king ten offsuit fold always, if you’ve got ace four offsuit and you’re making ace nine offsuit snap fold, you’re just doing so much better than if you’re too passive in this spot and just calling. Also say you do three bet and the button calls. You’re now playing a three bet pot as the aggressor instead of a single-raised pot as the caller. You have a range advantage on way more boards and you get to rep hands like ace king on king seven deuce when you’ve got jack five suited for example. It’s just a better outcome all-in-all to be three betting correctly from the big blind. That big blind three bet range is obviously quite wide versus a wide button range and has some uncomfortable combos in it.

(03:31):

If we take a look now at Big Blind versus under the gun, we’ll see that we’re not three betting as aggressively, but it’s still really important to find the suited aces, the suited connectors, the suited broadways, and the low frequency combos of hands like ten eight suited, king nine suited, jack eight suited and so on. Again, winning the pot preflop is really nice and another important factor is we now have board coverage on a variety of flops. If our range is really broadway heavy when we three bet and the flop comes down six five four for example, our range is really struggling as a result. Last thing I’ll say with this, you can’t just plug this leak and go from massively under three betting from the big blind to suddenly three betting all these combos that you’re not used to playing. It’s something you need to implement slowly and surely. Also really important, make sure you have a good idea of how to play postflop so all of a sudden you’re not seeing flops with a much wider range and you’re not sure how to play it. But I cannot stress enough how important it is to be three betting aggressively and correctly from the big blind instead of being too passive and just calling with too many hands,

Mike Brady (04:38):

Particularly against thinking players. I’ve found that three betting light from the big blind is incredibly effective because frankly it’s just given so much credit. People assume that if you had a pretty good hand you would’ve just flicked in the call. You were getting great pod odds. So when you decide to three bet, they tend to put you on a very strong hand and might even make some really big folds with hands like king jack suited or even like ace jack offsuit when they’re supposed to call or four bet. You really get a lot of respect, at least at first. I also want to reiterate a point that Gary made about studying postflop after three betting from the big blind so you’re not a fish out of water when you actually reach the flop with this wide range. For example, using the Lucid Poker Trainer, we can look at a particular situation.

(05:26):

The button opens, the big blind three bets, the button calls and we get an ace seven six flop. You might think, well, I three bet preflop, that’s an ace high flop. I should c-bet this flop maybe every time, maybe 80% of the time, whatever. I’m going to leverage my range advantage and I’m going to bet very often, but if we look at how this spot is actually played by the solver in the Lucid Poker Trainer, we could see that on a seven six ace after three betting from the big blind, Lucid checks 62% of the time facing the button. So you can imagine how big of a mistake it will end up being to just bet every time when the solver is checking well over half the time. And this is the type of thing where studying just can’t be substituted. This isn’t something that’s going to be easy to intuit out. You really just have to dig into solver solutions using a tool like the Lucid Poker Trainer and see how you’re supposed to play your range generally on different boards, and then you’ll be better prepared to play this loose big blind three betting range post flop. With that said Gary, I think we’re ready for tip number three.

Gary Blackwood (06:30):

Tip number three, be willing to adjust your ranges based on the players at your table. We’ve just spoken about the importance of playing a good theory-based strategy in the right spots, but players who just stick religiously to their preflop charts without deviating are making costly errors. We use our charts as a guide. They are not set in stone and we must be happy to deviate really quite often. One perfect example, recreational players and weaker more passive players they call preflop too much versus raises with hands that they shouldn’t. If I’m under the gun and there’s a recreational player on the button, I don’t open a hand like six five suited. That’ll be a mix sometimes. I also don’t open a hand like king ten offsuit. That will be a mix sometimes. I don’t open these marginal hands that are even more likely than usual to be out of position because there is a loose passive player on the button.

(07:20):

What’s more the pros all want to play with that weaker player, so the blinds are more likely to call that a little bit wider, which means more multi-way pots and obviously we have less equity or they squeeze to try and target and isolate the weaker player on the button, so it’s just a bad scenario to be opening these marginal hands. The exploit that I make there as I tighten up and I don’t open with these marginal hands, which are more likely to be out of position. Another way we can deviate from our charts is when we have really, really aggressive players behind who will three bet super aggressively. Let’s ditch hands like pocket twos under the gun and jack nine suited under the gun plus one in that spot, and open stronger, more robust ranges that won’t have to fold really often versus the inevitable three bets that are coming our way.

(08:05):

These two examples are all about exploiting preflop by not raising. You can exploit in other ways like flatting monsters preflop to induce squeezes versus aggressive players. But a tip within a tip here if you want to do that, if you want to flat preflop with aces and ace king to induce squeezes, do it when you’re under the gun plus one or under the gun plus two. If the hijack raises, you should never flat ACEs in the cutoff or the button because it’s so less likely that someone squeezes and if you’ve got aces and you’re seeing a flop in a single raised pot, that’s just a disaster compared to seeing a three bet pot in position. So if you want to flat those monsters do it when you’re under the gun plus one or under the gun plus two and never from late position.

Mike Brady (08:50):

I would recommend making that move quite sparingly as well. I have to be able to look to my left and see at least two, maybe three players who are going to be squeezing aggressively in the vast majority of low stakes live cash games, maybe even the vast majority of games in general. That’s not going to be the case and you’re probably going to be better off just fast playing with your strong hands. I’ll also jump here by sharing probably my favorite overall preflop exploit adjustment that I like to make, especially in low stakes games. This one works really, really well in the right spots. I love juicing up my raise size quite considerably when there’s a massive calling station in the big blind or a massive calling station on the button or maybe one who limped. I’ll give you one quick example. I was playing a 1/2 cash game at The Lodge with my wife sometime last year.

(09:42):

A player limped under the gun, ended up calling a raise and he reached showdown and he showed down eight four offsuit. And he limped in early position and called a raise. So immediately I tagged that player in my head and thought, okay, when he’s the big blind or when he’s already in the pot, I’m going to have a pretty value heavy range, and I’m going to really increase my raise sizes by a lot. And I think there was one hand where he limped for $2 and I made it like $25 with king queen suited and he called and then he check-folded the flop. And it’s like I just made 12 and a half big blinds that I really should never be making and it’s all because I was paying attention and saw what that player was capable of doing when it came to his preflop calling habits. So the key takeaway with that tip, be observant and be creative when it comes to your preflop exploitative adjustments. Alright, moving on to tip number four, take it away, Gary,

Gary Blackwood (10:35):

Again, really important. Let’s tighten up your calling ranges in games with high rake. We’ve spoken about not calling too wide from the big blind multi-way earlier. Let’s go back and revisit the big blind and now focus on higher rake environments. One of the great things about Lucid GTO Trainer is that we have a high rake preflop chart to go with a more normalized rake structure. Look at the types of hands that are now not calling in a higher rake environment when the button raises and the big blind is constructing their defending range; queen nine offsuit, jack nine offsuit, ten eight off and then suited hands like jack four suited nine, five suited five deuce, four deuce suited the list goes on. You can defend these in normal rake structures, but when the rake is higher, these no longer become profitable and we unfortunately have to just let them go.

(11:23):

It’s really important that we’re mindful of the higher rake environments we find ourselves in and we adjust accordingly. Because like I say, some calls go from being slightly profitable to slightly losing based on the rake structure. Beating the rake doesn’t just apply from the big blind either. If we look at how the button responds versus a cutoff raise, we’ll actually see Lucid play no flats at all here. Comparing that to a reasonable rake structure, we’ll see that there’s a big difference. Overall being tighter and more aggressive preflop will be higher EV in the high rake structures

Mike Brady (11:57):

In general, calling actions are going to be the ones that suffer the most in high rake environments because you’re essentially guaranteeing that you’re going to the flop and you’re going to pay that rake, which reduces your pod odds. Aggressive actions don’t tend to get penalized quite as much in a lot of spots. You’ll see a high rake sim playing just as loose when it comes to raising compared to a normal rake sim, so a lot of the time you can still raise roughly the same range. You could still roughly three bet the same range, but when it comes to calling, you really got to tighten the screws on your preflop game and the goal here is to avoid paying that costly rake because if you just raise and take it down preflop, you don’t pay any rake at all. We’ve got one more tip ready for you. Go for it, Gary.

Gary Blackwood (12:43):

My last tip is the error on the side of aggression rather than passivity. It is so easy when we play to fall into the trap of being a loose, passive player, flying preflop in every spot with certain hands, being a bit too loose, not being aggressive, not three betting enough, letting players behind us into the pot for cheap, letting the original raiser seal flop for cheap. The best players in the world, they three bet aggressively, they isolate, they get players heads up in three bet pots instead of five ways in a single raised pot. We all know how tough it is to play against an aggressive opponent who constantly has their foot on the gas. Let’s be that player. As well as that, one of the benefits of playing like this is that particularly at lower stakes games, people don’t four bet bluff anywhere near as much as they should, which means we’re going to get to see a lot of flops in position.

(13:30):

We’re going to be the aggressor or we’re going to get to just c-bet and take it down a lot. It’s much more profitable to be the aggressor compared to being passive and just calling a lot of the time. We can use Lucid again to look at our cutoff three bet range versus a hijack open, so many suited broadways in there, lots of offsuit broadways, suited connectors, suited aces, even hands like pocket sevens are in there as a three bit instead of flatting pre-flop and allowing other players in let’s be the aggressive player who’s putting in those re-raises, making our opponents uncomfortable and playing bigger pots heads up as the aggressor.

Mike Brady (14:05):

The one caveat I’ll throw in particularly for live players, and especially if you are a live player who plays in a game with low or no rake. Because the players in your games probably don’t squeeze very often, they’re probably not super aggressive and thus they let you realize a lot of equity post flop calling is a little bit better in those games and you can definitely mix them in, but it’s a line you have to walk. You still want to be that aggressive player, but if I’m in middle position and I face a raise and I have pocket fives and I look to the left of me and I have four or five players who are just never going to squeeze and are going to play super passive, I’m probably going to flick in the call with pocket fives rather than fold or three bet it. But again, that’s a very specific adjustment based on the game that I’m in. In general, you should error on the side of aggression and be that tough player that most people don’t want to play against.

Gary Blackwood (14:57):

Yeah, I totally agree. Tip number three was to not have our ranges set in stone, so I totally agree with your example there. We want to deviate accordingly in that example you gave when you’ve got the passive players to your left. Let’s go ahead and make the call with the pocket fives there.

Mike Brady (15:11):

Let’s wrap up with an exciting announcement here. The new Low Stakes Launch Pad course, part one is live in the Upswing Lab right now. Gary, Tim Jenkins, and myself have collaborated on a course within a course. You can find it in the Upswing Lab. Again, it’s called Low Stakes Launch Pad. The idea of this course is to teach you all the fundamental poker strategy that you need to know to beat low stakes games. Part one is about a three hour lesson where I go over a bunch of fundamental poker concepts that you really have to know if you want to succeed in 2025 and beyond. From there, I pass it over to Tim and Gary and they go over a bunch of specific preflop strategies for both high rake games and multi-way pots. It actually overlaps quite a bit with what we’ve discussed today, and almost every video has resources linked below it where you can learn more about what was covered in the video.

(16:04):

Parts two and three are going to be coming out most likely in December and January. Those ones are going to cover postflop strategies, exploitative adjustments, and some intangible stuff, maybe even some live tells. If you enjoy this show, the Level-Up podcast, I think you’ll really enjoy this course. We tried to make it a very similar teaching style where it’s very digestible and easy to understand with a lot of helpful explanations and resources along the way. So if you want to check that out, head over to upswingpoker.com and join the Upswing Lab today. Don’t forget to use coupon code LEVELUP to get $50 off. Thanks for listening or watching. We’ll see you in the next one.