Playing solid profitable limit holdem is a matter of starting hand selection, position and understanding pot odds. If you don't understand pot odds or just need a refresher or a chart, check in the basic poker section.
Position is the most overlooked part of holdem for beginning, and some veteran, players. The later you act each round, the more information you will have to make decisions with and the less likely it will be that you are raised by a player behind you. The best position is the button and the worst is the small blind. The more information you have before you are required to act, the better your results will be. This is the main reason to only play strong hands from early position. Here are my starting hand suggestions. If you are new to holdem or are struggling to become profitable, I strongly urge you to follow them closely. As you gain experience you will be able to deviate from them depending on the make-up of your opponents, your table image and your ability to play correctly after the flop.
Early Position AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AKs, AK, AQs, AQ, AJs, KQs
Middle Position TT, 99, AJ, ATs, AT, KQ, KJs, KJ, QJs, KTs
Late Position 88, 77, 66, 55, 44, 33, 22, Axs, KT, K9s, QTs, JTs
This chart is just a guide and you must adapt it to the situation you are in. For example if I am in middle position with AJ and there is a raise and re-raise in front of me, I will fold unless the re-raiser is a terrible player. A solid player won't re-raise an early position raise without a very strong hand. In late position, the small pairs are only good if they flop a set, which only happens one out of about every eight times. Remember back to the pot odds discussion, this means that for you to be profitable playing small pairs you must be able to win over eight times your investment when you do hit your hand.
I mentioned starting hand selection in the first line of this section and then gave you some starting hand guidelines. The reason starting hand selection is so vital to profitable play is because if you were to enter a pot with a better hand than your opponent a million times, you would win a higher percentage of the pots than they would. Of course short term variance, often referred to as luck, sometimes lets a weaker hand win, if you repeatedly enter pots with better hands than your opponents you will be profitable in the long run. This is especially true in limit holdem. In no-limit, often the way you play your hand and read opponents and situations is more important than your starting hand selection. That is why you will often see pros on television playing some strange starting hands.
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