Playing Limit Before the Flop Part One

In the online Texas Holdem limit games that I play in, there is at most only six players on the table as I am playing in six max games whether I am playing limit or no limit online and that even reduces to six players in the six handed games on bwin poker.

Many players think that you need to be more aggressive in games that are medium and short handed. This is only true to an extent that you are being more aggressive but only during the hands that you are in. I would define my style in all poker ring games as not just tight aggressive but tight very aggressive. If there is no such description in poker literature then I have just invented it.

Unless I am in the blinds then I will not call many raises. I will either be three betting or folding if it has already been raised before me. I will do this even with marginal hands because three betting marginal hands helps you to create dead money by forcing the blinds to pay extra money to take a flop. When you create dead money by the blinds folding then this often turns many hands that were –EV into ones that are +EV.

Despite the fact that I am always playing six max games and that sometimes one or two players will be sitting out and thus making the game short handed, I still play fewer hands than most of my opponents. Since I commenced writing for the bwin poker sites, I have been sponsored by several poker sites and the ring games on these site are generally five max games and six max. But the guidelines in this series of how I approach limit cash games will only be that….just guidelines.

I don’t want to show a few hand examples that show how you play flush draws or straight draws or the myriad of other different types of hands for the simple reason that you can never do it justice. This is not a cop out, it is just how it is. I want to teach you something different, how a professional poker player thinks and operates whilst at the table both in a live and an online setting.

But despite this, I still want to give you some solid pre-flop guidelines for why I do what I do in short handed games. This is because if you can get your pre-flop play to a decent standard in limit hold’em, you will have a fairly firm foundation in which to work on.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in most limit players games when they play short handed is that they do not make the proper adjustments from full ring games. While I cannot give a full and proper evaluation of any form of poker due to space and time restrictions, I can address a few key areas that I feel are very important.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”

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