HOW TO PLAY THE HANDS
If you’re first in the pot, you should often open with a raise, but not always. It depends on the hand itself,on your position, and on the other players.
Sometimes you should open by just calling the blinds, intending to reraise if someone raises. Sometimes you should open by just calling and just call if someone raises.
I can’t give you any hard and fast rules for when to call, raise, or reraise. As a general rule, if you have any doubt, the best thing to do is probably raise.
With your very best hands, such as a pair of Aces, if there is any chance at all that someone else will raise, then you should just call, intending to reraise.
Such a “limp-reraise” often works well with other hands also, such as a pocket pair of Kings or Queens, but with less than a pair of Aces, you need to be more certain that another player will raise, giving you a chance to reraise.
With most strong hands, you actually make more money if you have more callers.
Limping in helps drag in those extra callers, so it’s often best to limp more from early position with strong hands and reraise.
You actually want more callers when you open early-almost every hand makes more money with more callers (A,A makes the maximum profit with everyone calling).
Your chances of winning that particular pot are greater with fewer callers.
The difference between getting four callers in for three bets versus two callers in for two bets is huge.
Don’t ever forget that poker isn’t about winning the pot, it’s about winning the money.
It’s different situation when you’re opening from a later position, however.
In a later position, it’s usually best to just go after the blinds.
Just raise and hope nobody calls.
You’re not likely to get many callers, they’ve already folded, and with most hands your edge is pretty small compared with the size of the blinds.
Basically, whenever you probably have the best hand to start out, you should pick an action that is likely to get the most money in the pot from other players.
A SIMPLE APPROACH
For the first-time player, I recommend a much simpler approach to the play of the first two cards than I’ve outlined in this chapter.
Basically it’s to play only hands with two big cards, that add up to “21” if evaluated as blackjack hands.
You can include large pairs in that. The basic hands would be an Ace with any face card or 10 and any pair of 10s or better.
Considering all the combinations of your cards, your position, and your opponents will eventually become second nature, but to the beginner it can be overwhelming.
Limiting your play to just hands that contain an Ace and either a 10 or a face card greatly simplifies the things you have to remember.
There are some flaws in using blackjack hands as a hand selection rule, but the flaws aren’t major.
You won’t be playing many hands using this rule, and that gives you plenty of opportunity to make observations about the game during your first hour or two of play.
At that point you can use the information that you’ve gathered about the game and the suggestions in the tables to make modifications in your hand selection.
Once you’ve gotten some experience, you can make some modifications to this simple approach.
From early position you should probably eliminate the weakest of the “21” hands, folding an Ace with a 10 or Jack.
You can play those two hands from middle position if no one has called.
From middle or late position, you should expand the hands to include those that give you a blackjack count of 20-any two 10-valued cards or an Ace and nine. Take it a step at a time.
Don’t try to do it all at once.
Entering a Public Cardroom / The Play of the Game / The First Betting Round
