You should play only very strong hands from early poker position.
It takes a powerful hand to beat nine other players.
Speculative hands without high card value should generally not be played from early position.
You want to see the flop as cheaply as possible with speculative hands and playing them from early position puts you at too much of a risk of a raise.
The exception is when the game conditions are consistently loose or very loose, and you know that there will be many callers with weak holdings.
When your position is more toward the middle or late position of the field, you can loosen up somewhat.
If four players ahead of you have folded, and no one has yet bet, you only need to beat five random poker hands and can probably open with much weaker holdings.
HANDS TO OPEN THE BETTING WITH A RAISE |
|
Percent of hands that are usually playable under a struggle for ante perspective by number of players left to act |
|
Number of players who haven’t acted |
Percent of hands that you can open with a raise |
9 |
6% |
8 |
7% |
7 |
8% |
6 |
9% |
5 |
11% |
4 |
13% |
3 |
17% |
2 |
24% |
1 |
50% |
Pick the Right Table / Picking a Seat / Theories of Poker / Betting Theory: The Odds
A Theory of Starting Hand Value
A Theory of Flop Play: Counting Outs and Evaluating Draws
The Dynamics of Game Conditions / Table Image / Player Stereotypes
Women and Poker / Spread-Limit Games / Double Bet on the End Games / Kill Games
Short-handed Games / Tournaments / No-limit and Pot-Limit Poker
