5 Preflop Mechanics You Should Master

04 Mar 2025

Intermediate

This material is for medium-skilled players

Today we are going to be discussing 5 preflop mechanics that you must master if you want to succeed at No-Limit Texas Hold'em. Recognize that preflop poker is not about memorizing a million preflop charts or poker ranges, and trying to replicate those million charts perfectly. While that would be nice to do, us mere humans are just mere humans. We are not GTO robots! Instead, it's about having good fundamentals and good preflop mechanics. So for now, I'm going to be teaching you preflop raise first in mechanics, why position and stack depth matter a ton, also three betting mechanics, and also some preflop tips for playing when you have a very short stack. 

If you're looking to crush $1/$2 cash games or small stakes tournaments, preflop poker is the most important skill to master! Without playing well preflop, you'll have huge leaks and have a very difficult time playing well postflop with poor ranges.

So number one: position is everything. The later position you are in, the more you should raise first in, RFI, meaning when everyone folds to you, you put in a raise because you have fewer people yet to act behind you. Essentially, you're taking your hand that you get to play, you get to pick which one it is, right? You don't play every garbage hand. You get to choose your hand, but you're taking that hand against all the random hands of the players yet to act. 

Especially when you have a very deep stack, like 100 big blinds or 200 big blinds. You really want to focus on seeing flops in position because you're going to be able to use your positional advantage, being able to act last, to really take advantage of the information your opponents give you throughout the pot. So let's take a look at some raise first in ranges from a few different spots.

Here we have two charts. We're going to be comparing these two. Let's take a look at this one on the left. This is the 80 big blind preflop raising chart if you're playing 8-handed, first to act in a tournament. The hands in red can raise, and the hands in blue need to fold. 

Also notice that you are not playing from an early position. Junkie suited connectors, small pairs are only playing about half the time. Lots of offsuit big cards like  ,  ,  ,   offsuit. All of these are not good hands when you're taking your hand against the other seven random hands at the table, plus you're out of position. It’s just not a good spot to be in, so you have to fold a lot. 

If everyone folds around you on the button though, just you, the small blind and the big blind, look at all the hands you get to play now. A ton, right?  ,  ,  ,  ,  . You get to play a lot of stuff from the button because you're going to be in position throughout the hand because you know you're against the small blind or big blind, and you're only against two random hands, so that allows you to play very wide. 

A lot of people on the button don't play the  ,  ,   or   offsuit. They just fold all of those, and by folding all of those, they're actually giving the players in the blinds a little bit of money every single time. You don't want to do that. 

You want to take the money for yourself, and very importantly, if you think the players in the blinds are going to defend either a little bit too tightly or a little bit too poorly postflop, you can raise even wider. Now, you can't raise 100% of hands, as some people try to do, but you can widen this range a bit if you want to raise  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  , sure, I have no problem with that at all if the players in the blinds are the more tight, cautious players. 

The hands you are able to play will be determined by your stack depth, or more importantly, the effective stack depth, which is the shortest stack among the players in the pot. Too many players make the mistake of just learning one range for each position. They look at 80 big blind charts, and they think that's all they need to know, but they do not adapt depending on stack depth. 

This is particularly important in multi-table tournaments, MTTs, tournaments that are, you know, normal tournaments you're all used to playing, because then your stack depth will fluctuate a lot throughout the course of the tournament. Sometimes you have a lot of chips, usually in the beginning, sometimes you're going to be short stacked, usually near the end, and if you play 15 big blind poker with the same range as you play 200 big blind poker with, you're not going to make it. 

Let's take a look at two scenarios: under the gun, 7-handed. Here's what we should raise with if we are first to act, 80 big blinds deep, as you can see, we just looked at this same chart, right? But 15 big blinds deep, notice how much tighter you should play, and more importantly, which hands don't really like playing so much anymore. Notice the small pairs, don't get to play, fives and lower are no good 15 big blinds deep first act. Low  suited also no good. 

Notice we do still get to play   and  ,   offsuit even sneaks in there a little bit because as you get shallower, high cards are going to start to gain value, but you see here, you got to be really tight when you are in early position. This is because you can't be min-raising to two big blinds, getting re-raised and having to fold and losing two fifteenths of your stack. It's super costly. So for that reason, you have to come prepared with a much stronger range. 

Many players raise and call raises far too often, especially in the small stakes games. Very often you'll see someone raise to $10 at 1-3 No Limit Hold'em, and they'll get seven callers. I guarantee you, those seven callers, a lot of them are making big mistakes, usually with offsuit connectors or junkie suited hands or marginal offsuit high card hands like   offsuit. These players are getting crushed. 

Every single time they do this, little bits of equity go to their opponents, and in cash games, it's even worse because there, the rake will crush you. So let's take a look at two examples in cash games:

Here we have the button against an under-the-gun raise. So under-the-gun raises, fold your undos on the button. Look at how tight you're supposed to play, assuming the player who raised initially is also playing well.

Hands in red, re-raise. Hands in green, call. Hands in blue, fold. Notice what is folding, what I really want to focus on.  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  , pocket fours, pocket threes, pocket twos. All these are not quite good enough to call a preflop raise with on the button against an early position player in a cash game because the under-the-gun player should be really, really strong and there's going to be a rake taken out of the pot. 

So this is a spot where you have to fold a lot. Now, most people in most cash games under the gun raise a little bit too loosely, like we just discussed. So for that reason, perhaps  ,  , all the suiteds, a few more suited connectors and a few more pairs become playable. 

So that also allows you to play a little bit wider because you're not going to call a marginal hand and get re-raised off of it. But this is a spot where you can't get carried away. You simply do not get to play too loosely and a lot of people do. You give them the  , or the pocket twos, or the   offsuit on the button and they call every time and they are losing poker players. 

Next, what about if the cutoff raises? That's the player to the right of the button. Folds are under the cutoff, they raise. Again notice, you don't get to get too carried away. Even here,  ,  , pocket twos,   or   offsuit are not quite good enough to play. Again, if the player on the cutoff is a little bit too loose and the blinds won't re-bet often enough, you can play a little bit wider than this, but not too much wider than this and a lot of people do. And because of that, the rake usually crushes them and if the rake doesn't crush them, the initial raiser do.

From the small blind, when someone raises before you, you simply must play tightly. Remember, from rule number one, position is everything and when you're in the small blind, you are always going to be out of position. And if you call, then the big blind is usually going to be getting pretty good pot odds to call and that's even worse because now you're going to be playing out of position three ways. It's detrimental. 

You're going to want to play very strong ranges in general. Let's take a look. In a cash game, small blind versus a lowjack raise first in. In this scenario, notice, not a whole lot of calling. A little bit, but not a whole lot. Mainly with just pairs and suited broadway hands and the   offsuit and the   suited. 

Look at what all is folding though, right?  ,  ,  ,  , pocket fours, threes, twos,   or   offsuit, etc., right? This is a spot where a lot of people make the mistake of calling far too wide. Again, if the lowjack raise is a little bit too wide, you can call wider. 

If the big blind does not 3-bet often enough, you can call a little bit wider, but you can't be playing the ace-nine offsuit or queen-ten offsuit or eight-five suited or seven-six offsuit. If you do that, you're going to get crushed and if you observe a lot of your opponents in small stakes cash games playing, they call with a bunch of junk because they think, oh, I got half a big blind in. I can call now. They're going to get demolished and that's good for you. 

Let's take a look at the small blind versus button. This is as wide as the small blind can possibly be, assuming the player on the button is playing well, and we already know the player on the button gets to raise pretty wide, right? So against that wide range, we get to also play wide and return, but notice how often we are re-raising, the hands in red. We're not doing very much calling at all, relatively little calling, and that's because when the button raises, their range is wide and we can take advantage of that by being aggressive. 

Also, if we call, the big blind is going to call a lot against two wide-ish ranges, and then we're out of position three ways, which is not what we want. If the button raises and then we three-bet, the big blind is going to be forced to either four-bet or fold for the most part, and they have to have a good hand to do that. So then we're going to get to play heads-up, and on top of that, we're making the stack-to-pot ratio shallower, which actually benefits the out-of-position player because the player in position is more and more advantaged as stacks are deeper and deeper. 

So this is a spot where, again, we don't get to call suited connectors, small pairs, etc. Also, a lot of the offsuit marginal high cards are no good, but this is a pretty reasonable chart that we can play, a reasonable strategy we can play, and if you just three-bet everything, it's kind of tough to go too wrong. 

By the way, when you are out of position and you decide to re-raise, say you're playing a one-three cash game and your opponent makes it $10, you want to make it about four times what they make it, like $0.40. If you're playing $0.50 and they make it $0.03, you're going to want to make it something like $0.12 because when you go smaller than that, what ends up happening is the player on the button is getting really good odds to call, and they have position, so they just start calling with everything or almost everything, and that's not really good for you because then you're giving them position against you, and you're not making the stack-to-pot ratio quite as shallow. So when you're out of position, you want to be 3-betting pretty big, usually about four times the initial player's raise. 

Finally, high cards are vital when short-stacked. All the pretty suited connected hands that are reasonable when the stack-to-pot ratio is really deep go way down in value as stacks get shallower. Instead, having the ability to simply make top pair and get your 20 or 30 big blind stack in is vital when you're playing short-stacked. 

So you're going to adjust your strategy to play more hands with high cards in them, both when you are raising first hand and when somebody three-bets. Let's take a look now at how you should adjust your strategies as you get really, really shallow. Take a look at this chart here:

This is how you should play on the button when everyone folds to you 15 big blinds deep in a tournament. The dark red is going all in, the light red is raising minimum, the blue is folding. Compare this to the 80 big blind raise first hand range. This is when everyone folds to you 80 big blinds deep on the button. Notice you get to play all sorts of suited connected hands, like  ,  ,  , and also like a decent amount of marginal offsuit stuff, like  ,  , etc. 

You actually get to play way wider when you're deeper stacked because, like we discussed, your postflop advantage gets bigger and bigger as stacks get deeper and deeper. But when you're shallow, position doesn't matter nearly as much because you're going to be playing all-in pre-flop or there's just going to be one bet going all-in post-flop. So take a look at all these suited hands in this middle region. Like  ,  ,  ,  . These hands opt to just fold. Also you don't get to play the marginal offsuit stuff quite as often,   offsuit,   offsuit, etc. 

Small pairs love to just go all-in for 15 big blinds, as do a lot of the offsuits, low suited , and a lot of marginal high card hands like  ,  ,  ,  ,  , and  . So recognize if you play this 80 big blind deep strategy all the time on the button and you min-raise all of it 15 big blinds deep, it's nowhere near ideal. You'd much prefer to play a tighter strategy that focuses on the high cards. 

That's it for today. Those are five pre-flop mechanics you must learn. And again, you don't need to memorize these exact charts. There are tons of charts available online, and you do need to study them. If you understand the general strategies and the mechanics you need to be using when playing, that's going to go a long way to setting you up to be playing good, strong pre-flop poker, which will help you play way better poker in general.