The key to being a winning low limit holdem player is developing a solid pre flop strategy. All quality pre flop strategies utilize the concept of playing tighter in early position and looser in late position. What this means is that you will play far less hands when first to act as you would while on the button.
Early position is defined as one of the first three players to act before the flop. The person first to act is commonly referred to as “Under the Gun” or simply “UTG.” Next to him is “UTG 2” followed by the middle position players “Middle Position 1” or “MP1”, “MP2” and “MP3.” The late positions player are the “Cutoff” which is the person to the right of the dealer button and “The Button” who is the person that occupies the dealer button seat and is last to act after the flop and for every street thereafter. Rounding out the preflop action are the “Small Blind” or “SB” and “Big Blind” noted as “BB.”
Here you can find a detailed starting hand chart that will suggest which hands to play in which positions.
Once you realize which hands are profitable to play pre flop the next biggest concept to master is the Gap Concept. The Gap Concept was made famous by David Sklansky. This essential poker concept states that you need a much stronger hand to call a raise with than you do to raise yourself. When faced with a raise in front of you it is ideal to fold hands such as AJ, KQ and QJ as these are “trap hands” that are easily dominated by other hands such as AK, AQ, and AA through JJ. By folding these trap hands you will save yourself lots of money by not drawing to 3 or less outs. The other side of the gap concept will have you raising with more hands in later positions as the relative strength of hands such as AJ and KQ, which we were folding to a raise before, are now great starting hands with fewer players to act behind us. The likelihood of these players holding a stronger starting hand is diminished therefore increasing the strength of our hand. This concept is lost by many low limit holdem players. By mastering the gap concept you will already be ahead of most of your competition at the tables. A huge leak in many players’ game is that they play too many hands specifically hands that are dominated by an early position player.
