Starting Texas Holdem Hands

The Hutchison Point System for Texas Holdem is an excellent beginners guide to starting hand selection. While learning this system will not make you a favorite at next year's World Series of Poker, it will most definitely give the new Texas Holdem player an idea of the value of the pocket cards he or she is holding.

Why is this important? The main reason players lose money in poker is because they play too many cards. This system limits the number of starting hands to cards that have a much better than average chance of winning. While this guide will not help you with many aspects of Holdem, including flop, turn and river play, it will simplify the process of which cards to hang onto and which to dump before the flop. This, in my opinion is the biggest challenge for players new to the game, and thusly a good edition for the general strategy section.

The Hutchison Point System

After being dealt your pocket pairs, assign the following values:

Ace = 16 points

King = 14 points

Starting hands are pocket cards you enter the game with. The selection of correct starting hands is very important in Hold 'Em, because the result often depends on the cards you play with. Roughly speaking, you need to be able to separate good cards from bad cards, fold garbage hands and play with stronger ones. Known affectionately as American Airlines, pocket rockets, or simply the bullets, a wired pair of aces is the top starting hand in all of Texas holdem. As you can see, bringing aces to battle against nine random hands gives you nearly a one third chance of winding up the winner. All Texas Hold’em starting hands can be separated into two categories: “suited” and “offsuit”. Suited hands contain two cards of the same suit, like J♣9♣, A ♥ K ♥, K♠Q♠ and 9 ♦ 3 ♦. All other starting hands are in the offsuit category, like A♠8 ♦, 7♣5 ♥ and K ♥ 9 ♦.

Queen = 13 points

Jack = 12 points

Ten = 11 points

All other cards are worth their “face value.” (ie. 5 of hearts is worth 5 points, etc)

Additional Qualifiers:

Pocket Pair = +10

Same Suit = +4

Connected = +3 (ie. 9-10, or Jack-Queen. No gaps.)

One Card Gap = +2 (ie. Jack-King)

Two Card Gap = +1 (ie. Jack-Ace)

What the numbers mean:

If your total is:

30+ Premium cards, that can be played from any position, if there are no raises.

27+ These cards can be played from Middle or Late position, provided there are no raises.

25+ Should only be played from late position, if there have been no raises.

To raise or call a raise, you should have a point total of:

34+ In early position

31+ In middle position

29+ In late position

Examples

Ace-Ace: That would be 16+16 for the two aces, and an additional +10 for their being a pocket pair. Thats a total of 42 points. Obviously strong and playable!

Queen-Jack suited: 13 + 12 for the cards, +4 for suited, +3 since they are connected. A total of 32. You could call the big blind with this hand in any position, but if there is a raise, you should only call the raise in middle or late position.

10-6 suited: 11 + 9 for the cards, +4 suited = 24 points. Fold them! This is a perfect example of a hand that many beginning players will call with, hoping for a flush or miracle straight draw. They will almost always lose, and even when the straight or flush is made, there is good chance that a higher straight or flush will take the pot.

Hutchison Statistics

The creator of this formula states that in simulations, only playing 30 point hands yielded a win rate of 17% in a 10 handed game where every hand is played to the river. Obviously, if you played every random hand, you would have an average win rate of only 10%. Thats a 70% increase.

In conclusion, one should note that the game of Texas Holdem is extremely complex, and a simple formula such as this certainly does not do justice to all of the other variables that determine winning and losing players. But even given the complexity of the game, it cannot be emphasized enough that the #1 mistake that beginners make is playing too many hands. If you have only lost money so far in Holdem, this is almost certainly at the root of the problem!

The Hutchison Point System makes starting hand choices much easier to decide upon and should result in a much healthier bank roll for the beginner in low limit holdem.

For the full article and disclaimers by Edward Hutchison, click the following link:

Basic Strategy:Tips : Position : Starting Hands : Bluffing : Betting : Money Management

The two cards that you are dealt at the start of a hand in Texas Hold'em are your weapons. If you want to play a hand, your cards need to be strong enough to fight against your opponents' cards to win the pot.

At the core of every winning poker player is good starting hand strategy.

Texas Hold'em starting hands table.

I'm not going to mess about here, I'm just going to give you the starting hand strategy table for you to get your teeth into. The tables below give starting hand recommendations for both full ring and short handed games depending on your position at the table.

How to use the starting hand strategy table.

First thing that you need to do is consider your position in the hand, because this is going to determine the range of cards that you are going to be able to play profitably.

• If you are in early position, you should stick to playing the hands in red only.
• If you are in middle position, you should play the hands in red, as well as the hands in blue.
• If you are in late position, you should play the red and blue hands, along with the hands in green.

So essentially, the better your position is at the table, the more hands you can play.

However, if you are in one of the later positions and there has been a raise before you, then you should forget about playing the hands in green, and stick with the ones in red and blue. This is because players raising from early position will typically have a strong hand, so you should also have a premium hand to play against them. Playing the green hands against a raiser from early position will usually put you in pretty bad shape.

Full ring starting hand strategy.

When you are playing at a full ring table that holds around 10 players, you really need to tighten up your starting hand selection. This is because the large number of players at the table increases the likelihood that at least one player has a premium hand, and so you want to be sure that you have one of the best hands at the table every time you see a flop.

The starting hand table may look to be very strict, but this is simply a rough guide to help beginner players find their feet in Texas Hold'em. After you start to learn the game and become more experienced, you can start to open up your starting hand selection to incorporate different hands in different situations. However, if you are a new player, it is advised that you stick with this table as it will give you the best shot at winning as you start out.

Short handed starting hand strategy.

Seeing as there are less players at the table, you can afford to open up your starting hand requirements quite a bit. If you stuck with the full-ring starting hand table, you would be playing too few hands and missing out on good opportunities to make money.

Short handed tables are going to be harder to play than the full ring tables because the action is generally going to be wilder and less predictable. You are almost forced to play more hands, which means that unless you know what you are doing, the chances are that you are going to lose more money than you would at a full ring game.

Again, just as with the full ring table, the short handed table is merely the basic guide for a beginner player. As you progress, you will be able to work out how to profitably include other starting hands into the line up. But as for now, stick with this table if you're just getting to grips with short-handed play.

Starting hand strategy overview.

If you are a new player, these tables are really going to help set you up in the right direction. Even though this has only been a pretty rough guide on which hands to play in each position, it should have helped to build a solid foundation for you to build upon.

How To Play Texas Holdem For Beginners

A lot of the time, there are going to be other factors like the type of players who you are up against, and/or the action that has taken place before you that will have an influence on your decision to play a hand. It's always best to use your head in poker, rather than relying on a table or rule for every play you make. So whilst this table will be a handy guide for now, try not to rely on it too much, and start to develop your knowledge of good starting hand strategy as you play.

At the end of the day, poker isn't really poker if you are playing from a set of rules. Always try and use your head when making decisions - they will be more profitable that way.

Texas Holdem Starting Hands Strategy

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