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Message: [QUOTE="F Paulsson, post: 448141, member: 6979"] Hi. I've had a couple of beers. I consider the largest step a poker player can make in his learning curve to be the time when he or she realizes that "hey, there's more to this game than preflop play." Those of you who have passed this treshold will probably know instantly what I'm talking about, and those of you who are still stuck just before that ugly barrier will likely scratch your heads. Let me elaborate. A hand that is statistically a favorite preflop and loses doesn't automatically give you the right to presume that everything that happens after the flop is a bad beat. Poker doesn't work that way. When the big blind berates me for open-raising a hand like J8o from the button in a shorthanded limit game (and I got lucky and turned a straight), I realize that I'm dealing with someone on the Other Side. The kind who are still stuck with preflop charts and "good hand"/"bad hand" think. J8o is, admittedly, not a great hand. But on the button, I can raise a whole lot of hands simply because the times I pick up the blinds from hands like Q4o will make up the times when my I run into resistance. It's situational. This post isn't about blind steals though (although that is an interesting topic), this post is about stepping outside the boundaries of the starting hands charts. Those charts are great for memorizing the basic idea of what's usually winning hands, but that's where their usability ends. Sometimes A9 is a re-raising hand, sometimes AQo is a hand that should be immediately folded when someone else raised. It depends. Today, especially in online games, a lot of people are very aggressive. Have you adjusted your preflop play to this fact? How? When someone who is very loose preflop, but moderately tight postflop, is in the big blind, do you adjust your preflop play? How? When someone will go to showdown almost always is in the big blind, do you adjust your preflop play? How? When you're in the big blind and get raised by a tight but aggressive player on the button, do you adjust your preflop play compared to if a loose player open-limps from the same position? How? Unfortunately, I don't know of any short-cuts to crossing the treshold. It takes - or did for me - a whole lot of thinking about the game (away from the table) combined with a crapload of practise. What works, [B]who does it work on, [/B]and when does it work. But it's a barrier that you need to break through. MrSticker mentioned in another thread that there are more varieties of fish than just loose, and he's right. Most players seem so obsessed with how people play preflop that they seem to completely disregard the mistakes that players make postflop, [B]where the mistakes start to actually matter.[/B] Sure, someone who will routinely call for two bets before the flop with A-7 offsuit is not playing smart poker. I agree. But that mistake is nothing in comparison to calling two bets cold on the turn with the sucker end of an inside straight draw in a small pot. When you're taking notes - and I hope you do - it's the latter one you should jot down first. "I can't believe you play J3" is the comment of someone who focuses on the wrong things. Sure, he limped with J3 suited. Of course, if you have pokertracker and a HUD running, you already know that. Or at least you know that this guy calls preflop with 65% of hands; what did you think that meant?! What's more interesting is perhaps the fact that he peeled an ace-high flop with that hand with nothing but a backdoor flushdraw. Please don't make a note on him saying that he "limps J3s". Please make a note about him peeling flop with absolute anything. And then adjust. TV-time. Night all. /FP [/QUOTE]

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