Phil's Starting Hands

Poker is an extraordinarily complex game. There are so many decisions that you have to make each and every hand you play. Some of these decisions are marginal, but many prove to be very costly to get wrong. True, there are only five choices: check, bet, fold, call, and raise. With all the factors that affect these choices it becomes extremely difficult to get it right anyway, it does not matter that the number of choices are as few as the number of fingers on your right hand.

Most of the time it is not even possible to say what the "right" to choice is, only what a bad decision is. It should not be to difficult to play poker, especially not in the beginning of a poker career. Studying one of the alternatives - to fold - one realizes that once that decision is made, no more decisions has to be made during that hand. If it is the first decision made during a hand, it is the only decision that has to be taken. That is good news, one does not have to play every hand. Playing poker is a matter of choosing the battles.

To continue the fighting analogy, it is also important to be prepared for the battles that you do chose to participate in. If the cards that you hold in our hand are good and stands the test of time, then the risk of making choices that you regret later on is lessened. This all boils down to high standards for the starting hand.

Poker professional Phil Hellmuth believes strongly in this and has designed a short list of starting hands that is a "strategy for survival" in Texas Hold'em.

1. A-A
2. K-K
3. Q-Q
4. A-K
5. J-J
6. T-T
7. 9-9
8. 8-8
9. A-Q
10. 7-7

This list provides strict starting requirements. Only playing these hands assure you of always playing quality hands. So then you are seldom making a mistake when you enter a pot, and most importantly the forthcoming decisions on later betting rounds are easier with these hands then with marginal hands such as K-Q.

There are more extensive lists that allows you to play more, and perhaps have more fun. But they are not as rewarding. The cost of playing more hands may prove to be very big. As you become more experienced, you will be able to play more hands but by then you have learned the right fundamentals by patiently following this list. In fact, only starting off with these hands and following up with decent play on the remaining betting rounds, should turn you into a winner in most looser, weak, low limit games. that is a strong incentive to follow the list.