Hands to play, and how to play them- for begginers

[fastplay]

If your new to Texas Holdem here is some advice on how to gain experience with out losing your bank roll. Keep in mind this stratagy is very tight, and is ment to keep you out of bad situations. As you learn, and get more comfortable feel free to open up your starting hand selection, and mix up your play alittle. Also this is ment for small stakes players.

AA KK- Play these hands extremely aggressive preflop. Raise 5-6 x the big blind. If your reraised then reraise 3-4x. Every once in a while you will end up with KK vrs AA. Just shake it off you cant play KK weakly.

The reason you want to raise so much is because at low stakes many people with still call or even raise you with much weaker hands. Also you want to get heads up with these hands. This is not a hand you want to get into a multi-way with. Do not try and slow play AA and KK as these hands tend to get weaker, and harder to play the more people that are in the hand.

QQ JJ - Play these hands fairly aggressively. In an unraised pot you will want to raise 3-6x the big blind. If you are reraised 2-3x call. If someone goes all in for 10 or more x your raise you probably should fold. If the pot has already been raised 2-4x then call.

Keep in mind that with QQ there are a few hands to watch out for. AA KK have you dominated. AK is a slight dog to you. With JJ you also have to watch out for QQ AQ KQ.

AK AQs- Play these hands Aggressively as well. Raise in an unraised pot call a raise. You dont really want to get pushed all in here. Keep in mind with AK you dominate AQ AJ A-anything. KQ . and with AQ you are dominated by AK, and you dominate AJ A-anything. With either hand your a small dog vrs a lower poket pair. Also watch out for AA KK. And QQ if you have AQ.

Poket 10's-Poket 2's- With a small poket pair you want to see the flop as cheap as possible. The reason is you will hit a set (three of a kind) about 1 out of 8 times. You can call a raise if(and only if) your pretty sure you can win 10x the amount you have to call if you hit your set. Also if the flop comes all under cards with no ovious draws your in pretty good shape.

Keep in mind that while a set is a very profitable hand, it can be beat. Also dont be to afraid of straight or flush draws if you flop a set. The reason is you have a full house draw wich is better anyway. Haveing a full house when someone has a flush will win you alot of money.

I recomend That while your cutting your teeth you stick to only these hands. Once you start to get comfortable with reading players, and playing very disaplined poker. Feel free to play as you wish. This giude like I said at the top is ment to keep you out of bad situations. Its purpose is to make your hands easy to play without having to make tough desisions. So look foward to folding alot and being ahead when you do play a pot : )

[FortMyersDrew]

This is a very well put together simple and straight forward explanation to beginners. Also something I would like to throw in there is always make sure you don't play more than 2-5% of your bankroll at a time. This is very important because if you take a hit which you will. You need to have enough in your bankroll to back it up. If you play 25% of your bankroll and lose a couple of fairly sized pots we are gonna end up with some bad situations and probably you re-depositing lol. Well best of luck begginers may the force be with you.

[TheAAce]

I agree with what he is saying to an extent. This is a good strategy to start with but by no means is there a magic formula that works for every situation. Every situation is different, and must be handled differently. If there was a certain way to play each individual hand, it would take away from the skill of the game and everyone would win. I would suggest watching people play, folding hands a lot more for a while until you notice how each player plays, because they do make it obvioius for the most part. Just pay attention to betting patterns and hands that are turned over, you can learn a lot just watching people, because we do have tendencies to repeat things. Good luck!