Planning Your Hand in Cash Game Poker

Forward planning is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of successfully completing any activity. This is no exception for poker, you are required to thoughtfully plan your hand because the actions you make on every street will effect the entire hand as a whole, as every betting round is not a separate entity. You have to know what you are going to do, what your priorities are, what are you expecting out of the whole event and many things like that.

The most important aspect of planning your hand starts when you are dealt your hand. At this stage in the hand, you have to decide if the hand is strong enough to continue with based on your position at the table. It may be a premium starting hand like a big pair, a drawing hand like suited connectors, or a weak hand like 72o which you would quickly throw in the muck.

Depending on the hand strength, and your position at the table, you are required to plan your strategy for the rest of the hand. Keep in mind that your hand and your position at the table are not the only factors which will influence your planning. If you have history with any of your opponents, then you will have a pretty good idea of how they play and what they may do, so you also want to consider the actions of the players still yet to act when you are deciding if you should fold, call, or raise pre-flop.

For example, you could be playing in a live full ring table, and you have a very aggressive player sitting to the left of you, and you are dealt AA in MP. One of the early position players open raises, who up until this point, has been playing fairly tight. But you know the aggressive player is capable of re-raising if you flat call. Instead of auto re-raising with your pocket aces, due to some forward planning of what you can expect to happen if you call, you decide to just call with AA to set a trap, and guess what happens? The aggressive player true to his form makes a big re-raise, which wouldn’t have happened if you had re-raised with pocket aces. To play poker successfully you are required to be deceptive, which requires thoughtful planning.

Unless you are dealt AA, there is no way of knowing if you have the best hand before seeing the flop. It’s easy to be deceptive when you are dealt a monster, but for the most part you are not always going to be dealt monsters, and you will be required to plan your hand on the flop, once you can better determine if you really have the best hand versus your opponents range of hands. You should try to work out all the possible hand combination’s your opponent could have, based on how they hand has played out up until this point.

Knowing your opponents is a very important aspect of the game. Opponents can differ in playing styles, some prefer to play tight and passive whereas other players will be loose and aggressive and will come out all guns blazing, according to the hand they have and other external factors like tilt. The more experienced you get under your belt, the better idea you will get at identifying your opponent’s playing styles and what type of hands they are playing.

With experience, your game will progress in leaps and bounds, and you will get better at putting your opponents on hand ranges and how they will play, and hence you can make more informed decisions when planning your hand.

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