A lot of the action in poker unfolds before the flop, and many times what you do (or don’t do) during this period can heavily influence your results in the game. In Lesson 8, we’ll take a quick look at some good strategies for approaching the pre-flop portion of a game of poker:

Calling before the flop

Calling that first bet is one of the more important decisions you’ll make during a hand of poker, since when you do decide to call you will almost always have to put more money in the pot.

The cost of voluntarily calling the blind when you don’t have a premium hand adds up over the course of a game. Remember, a dollar saved is worth just as much to you as any dollar you could win.

In late positions you can call with average to good hands, but in early positions you’ll need a very good hand to call. For long-term success, the trick is to consistently play the hands that you think have the most chance of becoming the best hand by the time the showdown rolls around.

Raising before the flop

In a lot of cases, a good thing you can do to immediately improve your game is to not routinely call pre-flop raises, unless you have a genuine raising hand. This will impact your game signficantly as there’s usually a lot of pre-flop raising, especially in the average low- limit game.

When you do raise, you should do so only with genuinely premium hands and not with hands that you figure will be beaten before the flop. This is especially true when you are in a very late position, as very few players will throw away their hands when they know they only have to call one bet to see the flop.

Don’t forget: a raise in an early position will tend to narrow the field while a raise in a late position will tend to build the pot.