There will always be great debate about starting hands on when and where to play them from. A lot depends on the situation, your skill level, your opponents skill level and the comparative chip stacks at the table.
Tight Play
As a new or learning player it is best to adopt a fairly tight strategy. This means playing less hands, only playing premium hands in position and only entering posts when you’re likely to be holding the best hand.
Easy Decision
The major benefit of playing a tight game is that you will be mostly putting yourself in situations where you have easy decision to make during the play. If you play too many hands you’ll find yourself in situations where your cards will make it very difficult for you to know where you stand in a hand compared to your opponent. For instance if you play a hand like K2 and hit your K to make a pair on the flop, you have a situation where you have made probably the best hand you could have hoped for, but if one of your opponents also has a K, then you are probably going to lose a lot of chips becuase your kicker is weak.
Win More Often
How much better off would you have been if you’d played AK in this situation? Playing premium hands makes all your decisions easier and improves your chances of profiting from your play. You’ll play less hands, which can be frustrating for a new player; but you’ll be winning more often. Leave to 92 offsuit to the professional players for now - there’ll be planty of opportunity to investigate that style of play later as your own skill levels improve.
Starting Hand Strategy
To help you develop this “tight” style of play, we’ve developed a fairly simple table which you can use as a guide to better play until your skill levels increase and your own playing style develops. We recommend printing this out and leaving it near your computer so you can refer to it during your poker play.
Remember though that poker is as much about playing your opponent’s hand as it is your own. Always try to get a read on your opponent’s hand.
Nuts Poker Online Starting Hands
Early Postion
The three seats to the left of the big blind
Raise with : AA, KK, QQ, AK
Call with : JJ, AQ, KQs
Fold : everything else
Middle Position
The three seats to the left of early position
Raise with : early position raising hands plus JJ, AQ, KQs
Call with : TT, 99, 88, 77, AJ, ATs, KJs, QJs, KQo, KTs
Fold with : everything else
Late Position
The button and the cutoff (one seat to the right of the button)
Raise with : middle position raising hands plus TT, 99, AJ, ATs
Call with : 88, 77, 66, 55, 44, AT, A9, Axs (where x is any small card), KJ, KT, K9, K8s, QJ, QT, Q9s, JT, J9s, T9, T8, 98, 97s, 87s
Fold with : everything else
(The small s stands for suited, the small o stands for offsuit).
