Since I made the decision to learnhow to play casino poker, I have been sharing my experiences with you.I should point out that I started this in January 2000 and the posting of thesearticles is a little behind my actual time frame. I have had some live playingexperience but I am trying to keep these features in the correct chronologicalorder.

In my quest for knowledge of Texas Hold'em, I have added two books to mylibrary that I found extremely helpful. They are by Lee Jones andby Lou Krieger. These books are excellent for the newplayer who will be playing in low limit games. Both of these authors writecolumns about Texas Hold'em for a national poker magazine.

The most important decision a player will make in Hold'em is deciding whichhands to play. Most players lose because they play too many hands. The besttwo-card hand you can be dealt is a pair of Aces. The worst hand is 2-7 unsuited.Many players mistakenly adopt a "any two cards can win philosophy. Thereare 169 possible two-card starting hands and only about 80 are playable.Which of these 80 you play will be determined byyour position to the dealer button.Not all of these hands can be played from every position. Cards of thesame suit are more powerful than unsuited cards because of their flushpotential. Strong starting hands such as big pairs have a better chance ofholding up to make the winning hand than smaller cards. Although it is possibleto get a miracle flop more often than not you won't get it. To be a consistentwinner a player needs to learn the correct starting hands.

To learn the starting hands I took the list of hand groups fromand created withthe starting hands on the front and the position they can be played fromon the back. I used this same method years ago to learn Blackjack basic strategy.That was back in the years before computer tutorial programs. After doingmy best to memorize the hands I practiced with theWilson Turbo Hold'em Softwareprogram. I found that besides position some hands were better with manycallers and other hands played better with fewer callers in the pot. Thiswas a lot to learn and for my initial foray into the poker room I wantedto simplify things as much as possible.

Next page Starting Tight Page 2, 3

Until next time, remember:
Luck comes and goes...Knowledge stays forever.

NOTE: This is the original series ofarticles that was written in 2000 as I learned to play the Texas Hold'em. Itdocuments some of my experiences during my first year of playing casino poker. Ihave tried to keep the links to outside sites updated where possible. This series of articles is not part of my book,