Not all of these hands are playable all the time from all positions. There are several factors that you have to consider when deciding whether to see the flop with your hand. I'm going to run down the list with some general advice about how to play each hand.

1. Pocket Pairs
AA – This is the best hand you can get before the flop. It's the hand that wins more often than any other hand, and it's the hand that wins the most money for you in the long run. Put another way, you could not do better than to have pocket aces every hand for the rest of your poker playing life. If you did, you wouldn't have to read the rest of this (or any other) poker book!

There are several ways to play pocket aces before the flop. Which strategy you choose depends on which goal you want to focus on. If you raise in early position, you will knock out most players, which will increase your chances of winning the hand. Since there will be only a few players in the hand, however, a raise in early position will also decrease the size of the final pot. If you are in late position, and a lot of players have already called, your raise will build a big pot, but the presence of so many players in the pot reduces your chances of winning the hand. It's a trade-off between small pot with a good chance of winning and a large pot with a reduced chance of winning the hand.

If you're in early position with pocket aces, you can also just call and hope that someone behind you will raise. Then you can backraise. You'll build a pot, and, if there are a few players between you and the raiser, you might knock someone out of the hand. This play builds the pot, possibly increases your chances of winning the hand, and gets some dead money in the pot. All of these benefits are very good for you.

KK – You can play pocket kings in almost the same way you play pocket aces, but you have to consider a few more things. Even though the odds are 19.5 to 1 against it, any other player who's raising could have pocket aces. There's also the dreaded ace overcard on the flop, which will come 22.5% of the time. For these reasons, if you're in late position with pocket kings, you might want to just limp in for one bet to see the flop. If you get an ace on the flop, it's easier to throw the hand away, since you have only one bet invested. Plus, if you flop another king or something else you really like, your strength will be very well disguised.

• Another Poker Strategy For Pre-flop Play Part2 (0)
• Starting Poker Hands Part2 (0)
• Starting Poker Hands (0)

In the long run, if you're a good enough player, any profit you make will come from the mistakes your opponents make when they play against you. One typical mistake your opponents will make is to play too many hands. Poker theory says that the best way for you to take advantage of that error is also to play a few more hands than average. Don't play too many more hands, though, just a few more.

I'm now going to show you another starting hand strategy. This new strategy is designed to be fairly conservative, safe, easy-to-understand, a little more fun to play, and, most importantly, a little more profitable than the other strategy you learned in the last chapter. Another advantage you'll have is that once you've learned this new strategy, you will then know two different starting hand strategies, so you'll have options when playing before the flop. You won't always play the same way with the same cards, so your opponents won't always be sure of what you have, which increases the likelihood that they'll make mistakes. Remember, your opponents' mistakes mean more profit for you.

The new way of choosing your starting hands that you're about to learn is pretty easy because it's based on understanding your play rather than memorizing certain groups of hands. Let's take a look at your second strategy for playing before the flop.

For the most part, you're going to consider playing with these three types of hands:
1. Pocket Pairs. You can now play virtually all pocket pairs. You can even see the flop with the small pairs under the right conditions, as I'll explain in a moment.

2. Suited Aces. Hands like A484 or even A424 qualify under this category.
3. Hands that add up to 20 or 21. An ace counts as 11, face cards count as 10, and all other cards are worth their face value. For example, AJ is 21 points, KQis 20 points, and A9 is 20 points. A48* is not a playable hand because it is not suited and does not add up to twenty.

There are forty-eight pocket pairs below a pair of 10s (pairs of 10 and above fall in the third category). There are twenty-eight hands that are suited aces that do not add up to 20 or 21, and there are 206 hands that add up to 20 or 21. This total constitutes 21.3% of all possible hands. That's twice as many hands as you were playing using the other system.

• Another Poker Strategy For Pre-flop Play Part4 (0)
• Another Poker Strategy For Pre-flop Play Part3 (0)
• Starting Poker Hands Part2 (0)