Under the gun

Published on Jul 3rd 2008 7:34AM by Shady9977 - Views: 47

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Shady9977

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Member Since: Feb 6th 2008

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First position before the flop is perhaps the hardest position to play at the entire table. This position is nicknamed under the gun. Makes sens to me.... under the gun is the first player to act as soon as the cards are dealt. It's the person to sitting immediately to the left of the big blind. After the flop under the gun is still an early position ( assuming you're at an 8-man table or larger ), which makes the things worse.

I play from first position pre-flop only PREMIUM HANDS. Don't play the same hands as you'd normally play in other position.

Let's demonstrate exactly why under the gun is so diffcult to play:

Exemple:

Let's say you're in first position before the floop at 1$-2$ no limit cash game and you have Q J off-suited, this is a fairly strong hand that you'd normally play. Hell ! you may even raise with these hand time to time. But you should not play this hand under the gun, it's only going to get you in trouble.And here's why...

Let's say you call the 2$ big blind with your Q J off-suited in hopes of seeing a cheap floop, the action goes around the 8-man table and Michael comes out firing with a pre floop reases. He raise 10$ (with big blind). And now you realize you've trown away your 2$, or you've about to throw away an ever bigger stack of chips.

Think about it: How ofthen will the action go around at the table without a pree-floop reaise? Not very often. The ods are someone is going to raise the pot, and play your Q J is now trouble because there are a lot of hands that will just have u dominated.

Ok. Let's say you're not-to-bright and you decide to call Michael raise and see the floop, everyone else mucked there hands.

Now, here's where it gets leally ugly. YOU KNOW that Michael has a strong hand. What are u looking froward with this flop? The only thing that can really help you is if bouth Queen and Jack hit on the flop, or maybe a 9 and T to give you the straight draw. If Michael has A-K,A-Q,A-J,K-Q or K-J you're in trouble. Those hand put you at about a 3:1 underdog, not a good place to be. If he have pocket Queens you're a 9:1 underdog, if Michael has pocket Kings or Aces you're about 6:1 underdog.

SO WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU DOING LIMPING IN AND CALLING A PRE-FLOP RAISE? YOU'RE JUST GIVING YOUR MONEY AWAY.

Ok. Back to the exemple:

The flop is: Q 9 3

Now guess who act FIRST?

You just hit top paire and you're first to act. Now what do you do? Your Queens aren't looking that spectacular because you have no clue about what Michael has. Being in a early position after the flop is other reason why under the gun positioning is so difficult to play. So let's say you decide to check because Michael looks like his ready to fire again. He bets 15$ , just like you expected. Now what? You've got 10$ in the pot with top pair, so 15$ doesn't seems like that much. So you call, and the nightmare continues. In short you end up becoming pot-committed and call Michael all the way down to the river until he shows his A-Q and steals a ton of your chips.

And that is the perfect exemple of how players get into trouble from first position before the flop. They try to limp in with a mediocre hand. And nine times out of ten you're just not going to get away with these. The key is only to play STRONG HANDS when under the gun. I ussualy play hands like A-A,K-K,Q-Q, J-J,T-T,9-9,A-K,A-Q,K-Q and small wired pairs on occasion. For some of this hands I will just limp-in, for others I will come out firing. The general rule is this:

If you're sitting at a tight table and you get a strong hand under the gun, make a raise. If you're sitting at an aggressive table and you get a strong hand under the gun, limp-in.

At an aggressive table someone else is going to make the pre flop raise for you, which means you'll get the opportunity to come back over the top of you opponent and creat heads up action for more chips.

At an tight table, you have to make the raise because you don't want everyone limping in and seeing a cheap flop. If you let everyone see a cheap flop you're going to get run down by someone playing their scraps.

REMEMBER, preventing yourself for LOSING big hands in often time MORE IMPORTANT than learning how to WIN big hands. First position before the flop is a position that makes you very vulnerable to LOSING big hands. So be careful.

Hope enjoy reading.

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