Poker Strategy

Tight Aggressive
The vast majority of new players start off playing every hand they get or every hand with a high card (J,Q,K or A). Often these hands are over valued. This is called "playing loose". Soon those players realise that it is a recipe for going broke quick and start to play "tight".

Which hands you chose to enter a pot with is one of the most critical decisions in No Limit Holdem (NLH). Making good decisions preflop will greatly increase your return! As the song says, you got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em and you should roughly be folding 2 out of 3 of your starting hands, 3 in 4 if you are playing very tight!

So which hands should you fold and which hands should you hold? If there was a correct answer to this, we'd all do the same thing and over time the only profitable position would be the dealers! The truth is that there is no magic formula but there are good basic principles and that's what I'll try and show you here. If you print this out and stick it to your computer I would be very surprised if you didn't see a noticeable increase in your returns.

While its nigh impossible to order starting hands perfectly, here is a good guide (in descending order). (An "s" means that the two cards are of the same suit, an "o" means they are off-suit ie: different suits).