Texas Holdem Tournament – Starting Hands for Beginners

If you are new to no limit texas holdem poker tournaments, you may be a bit unsure about which hands you should enter a pot with. When you watch a Texas Holdem poker tournament on television, you often see players entering pots and even raising with all kinds of hands, and it may not be clear whether an inexperienced Texas Holdem player should be doing the same.

If you've never played any kind of poker before, you need to familiarize yourself with the start hand rankings in Texas Holdem. As a general rule, when both cards are in the A-through-T range, you often have a playable hand. The higher they are, the better they are. Also, pairs are generally playable, the higher the pair, the more playable they are. The best hands are hands like AA, KK, QQ, AK and AQ. You should give additional value to your Texas Holdem hand if both cards are in the same suit and/or close together, but this should not be your only consideration.

Many Texas Hold'em players like to play suited connectors, hands with consecutive cards of the same suit, such as 8d 9d or 4h 5h. They like to do this because if you catch a big hand, it is often well disguised and you can win a big pot. However you can often get into trouble with these hands if you only catch part of the flop with them or if someone should catch an even bigger straight or flush.

Early in a Texas Holdem tournament you should stick to the premium cards. There often isn't too much money in the pot to begin with, and your chips are valuable. It is usually good strategy to wait for big cards, try to flop big and win pots from the looser of your opponents. Later in the tournament, as the blinds and average stack size go up, you may find yourself wanting or needing to increase your range of starting hands.

In Texas Holdem tournaments you should be willing to play more poker hands in late position. If you act first, a KT is not a great hand to enter a pot with, as you can get in trouble if you flop a K and one of your later opponents has a bigger one. However, if you are one of the last players to act, you will be in a better position to gauge if your hand is good, therefore hands like this are often worth playing.

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