Raise or Fold when you are first to enter a Pot.
This tip would refer to those situations in which no one had yet called or raised when the action would get to you.
Since tight-aggressive poker would be winning poker, you would have to fold your poorer hands. You shouldn’t call in an effort to hit a lucky flop.
Not only would it be hard to get a nice flop when would be holding rags (substandard cards), but if you were to open the action by calling, this would often be seen as an invitation for other poker players to call behind you. Now, you would have to play an poorer hand while out of position. This would not be a winning hand.
When you will have a good hand, you would have to open the pot with a raise. Besides putting pressure on the poker players yet to act and the blinds, your raise would permit you to take the lead in the pot. Even if you were to miss the flop entirely, a bet on the flop, coupled with the strength you would exhibit with your original raise, might be enough to win the pot.
Normally in holdem poker, it would be worthwhile to open the pot only if you would feel your hand would be likely to be the best. This would mean that hands such as an eight and seven suited, while playable in some cases, should not be played when you would be first in. This hand would not be strong enough to merit a raise, and calling when first in would not be in your repertoire.
If you were uncertain of whether your hand would be worthy of a raise, a good guideline for playing before the flop would be that whenever you were in doubt, you would have to fold. You would be dealt plenty of hands with which you could forge ahead aggressively.
Your position is very important in deciding whether to open the pot.
As specified previously, when playing holdem poker, you would have to attempt to play most of your hands from the late position, since this would permit you to determine more precisely the strength of your rivals. At no point in the hand would this be more apparent than in deciding whether to open a pot for a raise.
Very few hands would have to be played from early position, which could be categorized as the first three seats in a ten handed game. You wouldn’t go wrong if you would stick to only quality hands, such as a pair of jacks, an ace and king, or an ace and queen suited.
In good games (those with several weak players), money could be made by playing a pair of tens, a pair of nines, an ace and jack, and a king and queen suited as well. This would be because the inferior poker players would be calling your raises with worse hands than these, which would not necessarily be the case in tighter poker games.
If the other poker players had folded to you and you had been sitting in any middle position, you could have added a few more hands to your opening range. Now, pairs such as a pair of nines would have positively been worth a raise, as would big suited cards such as an ace and jack, or king and queen. An ace and queen offsuit would also have been worth saving now. The hands eight-eight, an ace and ten suited, and an ace and jack offsuit would have been minor here, becoming more playable in later middle position. Holdem is a game of position.
On the button, you could have radically stretched your playbook when it would have been folded to you. The basic reason for this would have been that you would have only the blinds to compete with, meaning that even if they should have decided to defend (called from a blind position in a raised pot), you would have held position on them for the rest of the hand. Pairs such as a pair of fives should have been played in almost every condition, and you could have raised with the baby pairs too, if the blinds had been either very tight or poor poker players.
You would have wanted to benefit from poker players who had played too tight in the blinds by raising them at every occasion. When a weak poker player had been in the blind and you had held the button, you should have minded playing quite a variety of hands either, as you would have held position on this mediocre poker player for the rest of the hand. This would have been a good way to attract chips your way.
In addition to any pair, you could have opened on the button with hands as weak as a king and ten or queen and ten offsuit, or with suited hands such as a king and eight. The button would have been the one time you may have wished to open with a drawing hand. Again, position would have been a major cause, along with the fact that if both blinds had folded, you would have won the pot right away. Even if had been called, your position and aggression would often have permitted you to pick up the pot with a bet on the flop in holdem poker.