Lesson #1 The Importance of Preflop Hand Selection

     For those that are new to poker, deciding which hands to bet and which hands to fold can be a difficult process.  I watched a player call a large raise with 94.  The flop came out 934.  He proceeded to push his entire stack into the pot.  The other player called and showed AA.  The turn came J.  The player with 94 typed in the box and yelled, "YESSSSS!"  It came through the chat box before the river card, which was another Ace giving the other player trips, and his 94 was lost.  His tournament was done but he stuck around to give the player with Aces an earful.  Told him how horrible it was that he called his all in, that he should have known he was beat, and that he was "one lucky $%^#@".  He continued for a while and nobody said anything until I asked him, "Why did you call the large raise before the flop with 94?"  His answer is the classic answer for any player that is still learning the game and it was in all caps.  "ANY HAND CAN WIN AND I HIT A FULL HOUSE WITH THAT LAST WEEK!"  Well, it is a true statement that any hand can win.  The problem is, while any hand can win, any hand can't win often. 
     Take a look down the list of hand odds and you will see how many times out of 100 any particular hand has the odds to win.  94 has a one on one odds of winning, 41% of the time.  AA has a one on one odds of winning 85% of the time.  You can't put those numbers together and get 100%, so what does this mean?  It means, if you are calling raises with rags (bad hands) you are going to lose more often than you might think.  Unless a player is raising any two cards, your hand may be worse than you hoped.  94 against AA (or any other pair higher than 9 for that matter) is going to lose 85% of the time.  For you to be successful in poker when you are learning the game, your hand selection should be your primary thought.  Being careful who you call and with what cards is how you will end up winning a key hand rather than giving away all your chips.
     When I first started playing, I had money to burn.  A loss here a loss there, deposit more money, and boom, I'm playing again. "Poker is mostly luck", I kept telling myself.  I will get on a lucky streak sooner or later.  I would keep playing my A4 off suit and wonder why I was constantly losing hands when I paired my aces.  "Kicked again!", as I lost another hand to the other players AQ.  Playing your ace is fine, but you have to be selective when you play it.  Do I play Arag (Ace with a low second card)?  Sure I do, in the right spot, in the proper position, against a particular opponent, at a particular point of the game.  However, when a raise has been made, usually I will throw it away, for one simple thought.  If I fold Arag, I cannot lose chips.  Because I folded, I know that I will be dealt another hand and it just might be the one I have been looking for.  Over the tens of thousands of poker games that I have played, not once was there a game when I was patient that a good hand didn't eventually come.  Ignore the urge to give away chips with a bad hand and you will soon realize you are going deeper in more tournaments.  Yes, those bad hands hit boats and quads sometimes, and you cringe as you wish you were in the hand seeing a big pot go by, but, in all reality if you were playing bad hands as a habit, you are rarely in the game long enough to see those happen.

Good Luck!