How you should play a hand before the flop
Your decision to call, raise, or fold before the flop must be based on several factors. Among the most important are:
1. Your cards
2. Your position
3. Your relative position
4. How much money you must invest initially
5. The number of players in the hand.
6. How your opponents play
If you ignore any of these factors when making your first playing decision, you are not likely to be a winning hold’em player.
Your cards
Starting hands (the two cards that are unique to your hand) in hold’em fall into some natural categories. You will learn that hands in different categories do well in different situations, so you need to understand and remember these categories.
Pocket Pairs: two cards that are a pair, for example, “pocket 9’s.” Since the difference in value between pocket aces and pocket deuces is so huge, we will separate the pocket pairs into three sub-categories: aces down through jacks are “big” pairs, tens through sevens are “medium,” and sixes through twos are “little” pocket pairs. These subcategories are, of course, somewhat arbitrary, but this is a reasonable division.
Big Cards: two “big” cards, ace through jack. A♣-Q♦ and K♥-J♦ are examples of offsuit big cards. A♥-K♥ and K♠-Q♠ are examples of suited big cards.
Connectors: two cards one apart in rank. They have the ability to make straights and, if suited, flushes and straight flushes. Examples are T ♦ -9 ♦ and 6♣-5 ♠. Note that QJs has the distinction of being both “Big Cards” and a “Suited Connector.” We sometimes include in this group the lesser quality hands with gaps between the ranks. For instance, 9♠-7♠ is a suited “one-gap.” T♣-7♣ is a suited “two-gap.”
Suited Aces and Kings: fairly self-explanatory. Examples are A♠-8♠, K♥-9♥. Of course, a suited ace is much stronger than a suited king because if you make a flush with it, you have the nut flush, whereas the king high flush can be beaten by the ace high flush. Having an ace high flush is much better than having a king high flush. Having a king high flush is only a little better than having a queen high flush.
Believe it or not, even if you chose to play only hands that are in these categories, you would be playing too many hands. Some of them are not strong enough to play in certain positions and some of them (32s comes to mind) are generally not strong enough to play anywhere. However, many of your opponents will play every hand that fits into the above categories, and a lot more as well.
TBC