Playing tight also makes your post-flop decisions a lot easier.Īs a rough guideline, we could say you should play no less than 18% of your hands as that would be too tight, and no more than 25% as that would be too loose. New players often make the mistake of playing too many hands, and a simple solution to losing less often is to play fewer hands. All new poker players should stick to a tighter playing style, though. Generally speaking, if you're good at post-flop play then you can afford to play a wider range of hands successfully.

There is no definitive answer to how many starting hands you should play. That's the only way to truly know if you should play those suited connectors or not. When you're done reading this guide, come back and check out our poker rooms list and see if you can put your new knowledge to good use. You can do that at any of our recommended real money online poker rooms It's vital to test your playing strategy.īefore we begin, let's first say that whatever strategy you come up with after reading this article, you should test it against real players to see if it stands in a real game. After reading this guide, you should have a solid understanding of how this game works and how you should play your starting hands. This is a suggestion on what is deemed to be good practice and a solid starting point for further learning of the art of playing poker. This isn't a definitive guide you'll follow to the letter, as there's no such thing in poker. What follows is a guide on starting poker hands in Texas Hold'em. Every player starts by learning the basic rules of the game and the appropriate starting hand selection, which is what we'll give you here.

Texas Hold'em is a game in which it's easy to learn the basics - covered in this starting hands guide - but difficult to master.

Texas holdem starting hand chart