Starting hands

It is generally true that many new players make the mistake of seeing the flop with too many hands. Their reasoning goes something like this, "I want to see a lot of flops because anything can fall on the flop and I don't want to miss out on a big pot because I folded." The problem with this logic is that most of the time you will not hit the flop perfect. In fact, most of the time you will not even make a pair. When you do catch a piece of the flop you want to be comfortable getting your money in. You want to avoid playing a guessing game for large chunks of your stack. Your hand should be strong enough that you can bet and get called by worse hands.

Good Example: you hold AK, flop is A-8-3. You can extract value from any AQ or lower. You could be beat by A8, A3, 88 or 33 (8-3 has no business in the pot, but you never know). In any case you should be willing to put some money into this pot.

Bad Example: you hold Q5, flop is Q-T-7. You have flopped top pair with no kicker and are beat more often than not. However, the top pair will be enough to cost you some money. Any Q has you beat (AQ, KQ, etc.) any set (QQ, TT, 77) and even if you do have the best hand, you still have to dodge straight draws (KJ, 98, J9). Just about all you can beat is a pair of T's or 7's and they won't give you much value. Basically any action means you have the worst hand, so there's no value in playing.

Playing a tight starting range will make sure that when you do hit the flop, you will most likely be way out in front. Your goal most of the time should be to flop top pair (or an overpair), top two pair, three of a kind or an open ended straight or flush draw. My top 10 starting hands are as follows.

A-A
K-K
Q-Q
A-K
J-J
T-T
A-Q
9-9
8-8
7-7

After these hands are playable hands, which should be played more carefully than the top 10 hands.

A-J
K-Q
small pairs, 66-22

With these hands you should have a good idea where you stand in most pots and can avoid dangerous guessing games. Later I will discuss when to open up your starting hand requirements to include more speculative or marginal holdings. Sticking to these however will keep you out of trouble for the most part.