PokerGreed Poker Blog - The Padawan - Newbie Poker Hand selection

Greetings everyone. I am a middle aged man who has been playing home game (for fun) poker most of my life. I also spent about a year playing (and losing) on line. I decided a few months ago that I could be a winning player, so I began to take it seriously. I have now played seriously just over 10,000 hands of poker on line. And guess what, I am (so far) a winning player. My kids will have a nicer Christmas this year, thanks to poker.

I have read books, and websites and poker forums to gain any knowledge I could. One of the things I noticed was all the books and most of the forums and websites are for ‘pro’ players. I have neither the skill nor the bankroll to play $200 NL holdem. I doubt you do either, if you are a new player. I also noticed that $10 NL or $25 NL do not play like all the books and ‘experts’ say poker should play. I also convinced Greedy Gecko that what I have learned, and what I continue to learn is worth recording here. I think this is very generous of him and very arrogant of me, but if you are still reading, then maybe I can help you avoid some of my mistakes. Believe me, I have made some monsters already.

The first thing I want to tell you about is studying. If you are new to serious poker, read. Read anything about poker you can find. It may not all apply at the level you start, but all knowledge is helpful, so read.

The second item is to get a good poker database. I use Poker Tracker (although there are others), and it has improved my game already so much that I can hardly begin to describe it. As I go forward with these posts, I will be talking about what I learned from both the game itself, and from poker tracker, so if you want to get good, get a poker database.

Let me give you an example of how it helped me improve my game, almost from the start. After playing for about a week, while I was winning, I was not winning a lot, and I looked at my data base to see why. I noticed that I was playing about 32% of my hands, and that some hands were big losers for me. So I dropped a few of those hands, and my winning $$ began to go up. So I looked again and dropped a few more, and did even better. Then I noticed that some hands, like AK off suit were also losing money. When replaying the hand histories, I saw that I was putting waaaay to much faith in those hands, and not dropping them when it was obvious I was beat. So I changed how I was playing those hands, and my wins went up even more. What I have ended up with now is a listing of 3 kinds of hands. I have labeled them group 1, group 2, and junk. Group 1 hands I will play from any position, any time. They are as follows:

Any Pair AKs – A9s KQs – KJs AKo – AJo KQo That’s it.

My group 2 hands, are hands that I will play only when the time is right. Like in late position or in the blinds, or if the table is passive enough to allow me to try to run with ‘em. They are:

A8s- A6s
KTs – K8s
QJs – Q9s
JTs- J9s
Any other 1 or 2 gap suited connector (except 4-2)
KJo- K9o
ATo – A6o
QJo

All the rest are junk. Sure, you might have gotten lucky with something else sometime. But they are not paying hands, don’t play them. Even if Uncle Frim says K4o is his favorite hand, let it go. Stay with what gives you the best shot. I got this list simply by looking at my database.

So you see, this database is an incredible tool. If you don’t have one, get one. It will do some other neat things too. Like help you spot the sharks and the fish at your table. More on that in another post. Good luck all,

The Padawan.