Early position pre-flop raising

What starting hands you decide to raise with as an average stack pre-flop will, as with most things in poker, depend on several factors. You should evaluate each of these factors closely when deciding whether or not to open with a hand.

The first thing you should look at is, of course, the actual strength of your hand. The better it is, the more likely you should be to open with it. However, closely related to the strength of your hand is the position you are playing from. In early position, your raising range should be tighter than it is in later position. The reasons for this are straightforward. First, there are numerous players left to act and therefore there’s a good chance that someone might have a better hand than you.

Second, you are at a positional disadvantage; if a player chooses to call or re-raise you, you will be providing them with information on every street post-flop because you will be first to act.

A third important factor is how your table is playing. The more aggressive your table, the tighter your range should be. The tighter your table, the looser your range should be. If you are playing at a passive table that likes to limp and call raises a lot, you should be somewhere in between loose and tight depending on the tendencies of the individual players.

As an average stack you also need to be aware of the stack sizes of the other players at your table. For example, if the player in the big blind has a very short stack or a very big stack, he will be more likely to play his hand and as such your hand needs to be stronger in order to open. A last factor to consider is your own image. Have you been raising a lot or playing very tight? You need to know what the other players at your table think of your play. If you've been opening a lot of pots because you've been getting good hands, they don't necessarily know this and could classify you as a loose, aggressive player and start playing back at you.

What’s your range?

What hands should you raise with from early position? There is no set answer of course, but in a typical situation your bigger pairs and bigger Ace hands like A-K and A-Q are certainly raising hands. It is important to occasionally raise with lesser hands that you would fold and/or limp with in order to keep your play a little unpredictable. A common problem is that players often give away their range of hands with how they play it. How many players have you encountered who always limp in and call raises with small to medium pairs from early position? Probably quite a few!

Instead mix it up and raise with these same hands from time to time and limp in with the hands you would normally raise with.