Starting Hands in Poker
When you move into any phase of a poker game, it is essential to make the right choice for your starting hands. There are roughly 3 phases of a poker game, the start of the game, the middle and the finish.
When the game starts, clever way to approach is to play tight. When you play tight, you keep you decisions to your self and let the others make the moves. This way, you wait to get an idea of your odds.
By the middle of the game, you mostly get in a position where you hands are stronger than what they were at the start. And at the finish, you should look to use your hand to get yourself in a position to grab the pot. It is important to keep this plan in mind to avoid hurrying into decisions.
But remember that you have to make yourself stronger as the game progresses and so, even if you play a loose pre-flop, you get yourself together and continue to keep it tight after that. Don’t be too loose for the emotion of it, be loose because you are cunning and have a plan.
In case you look around on the table and see that the blinds are low, you can plan on making the flop. But beware, that there are other players too who probably have stronger hands and may just take your stake away.
If you don’t choose the right moment to make your moves, you may end up loosing your chips to others. But that is about the hurrying part, which I don’t prefer. The intelligent way to do it is to play tight and wait. Let the other players draw their swords and fall. You don’t have to do that, you have to keep you eyes on the pot. But if you just want to go at it, do it only if you have a very strong like 2 aces or 2 Ks or something of the like.
When you are in the middle of the game, you have seen the game progressing and have fair idea of what’s happening around you. Others players might be trying to make poker faces, most of them doing it wrong. What you have to do is to choose your starting hands for this phase of the games according to size of your chip stack.
If you have only a large chip stack, you can play much more aggressively and not worry about losing your chips as much. If you are short stacked, you have to wait until you get the right hand to make your move. Your aggression and passiveness at this stage of the game mostly depends on the cash you got and so make the appropriate decision only after counting it.
Finally, if you reach the finishing part of the game, it means that you have waited and by now have better hands and a better idea of other’s positions. But now, the waiting part is done; you should try to steal blinds and look to get the cash in. You will notice that even the other players will start to play loose.
Don’t be surprised because even they have read articles like these and they know that this is the right thing to do. Your job is to maximize your share of the loot. The players who are low on the chips will push all in but stay away from such ‘all-in’ type players. Just play according to the strength of your hand the size of stack. Luck will do the rest.
