Hand Selection

Most players play too many hands. While it's true any two cards can win, some starting hands will come out on top more frequently than others (For example AA will win about 30% of the time while A5 will win about 9%). If you are playing for enjoyment fine...play what ever hand suits your fancy. If however, you to aspire to make a living playing poker you must develop the discipline to throw away most of your starting hands. Personally I play 20% or less of my starting hands. We've all suffered bad beats from someone playing an awful starting hand, which is how it should be. If you are making good decisions about when to enter the pot all of your beats should be bad beats. Not long ago I did an experiment in which I entered an online $20/$2 No-Limit Hold'em tournament with about 800 entrants when registration closed. I wanted to see how far you could get in a tournament by only playing from the blinds and otherwise folding everything but AA, KK, QQ, AKs and JJ. I ended up playing about 4% of the hands dealt to me and fold hand after hand for what seem like forever. The bottom line is I made almost two hundred bucks that night and have enjoyed being profitably bored ever since. Look for a starting hand chart and an Hold'em odd calculator soon.