For many beginning poker players, every hand looks good. After all, what’s the excitement of poker if you can’t take your hand into the flop to see if you hit anything? And this concept works pretty good actually….when you’re playing practice poker. However, anybody who is playing poker for money should stay clear of this philosophy since it can end up costing a person lots of money in the long-run.
That’s why you need to play as tightly as possible in the beginning so you avoid bleeding out money. Now most poker strategists preach that you should play as aggressively as possible so you can be successful. However, the problem with this is that beginners don’t have the necessary skills to play aggressively from the onset. Aggressive play takes lots of experience and you simply can’t fake this until you develop the necessary skill set.
With this in mind, you should only be raising pre-flop with premium hands like J-J through A-A (as common strategy dictates) and playing good hands in middle to late position. Playing premium hands pre-flop is easy, but you’ll have a lot more difficulty with other cards such as A-10 or K-J. Some beginners will overvalue these hands and it’s a mistake that will end up costing them major money.
Instead, you want to treat hands like A-10 and K-J with caution since they are not able to dominate premium hands and you needs lots of help from the board to win. Seeing as how this is the case, play tight and try to see flops cheaply until you develop a better feel for when to play aggressively. When you do develop more skills, you can open your range of starting hands.