Playing from Early Position

A general rule of thumb when evaluating starting hands is to be willing to play less hands from early position than you would from middle or late position. You want to pay attention to your opponents’ actions when deciding whether or not to play, but that’s difficult when you have to act before the other players at the table. Since you must act with less information in EP, you generally should only play the best starting hands.

Raise with Big Pairs

From early position, you can often open with a raise with big pairs (AA through TT) as well as hands like A-K and A-Q. You can sometimes raise with lesser hands, too, if only to prevent opponents from always having a good idea what you have when you raise from early position. Be careful, though. Beginners especially should be very conservative from early position, playing very few hands and sticking to strong ones when they do.

At the same time, if you can see a flop cheaply with a small pair, you can try to do so even from early position. That’s because if you can hit a set (three of a kind made up of your pocket pair plus a community card) you stand to really win big. However, from early position you can’t know what opponents acting behind you are going to do. Thus, if you limp in and then get raised, you might have to fold your small pair and lose your initial bet.

Playing from the Blinds

Finally, some strategic advice about playing from the blinds. You should expect to play very few hands when in the small and big blinds. That means getting involved only if you can do so cheaply (e.g. if no one has raised) or if you have a monster hand like the premium pairs or A-K. For example, with KK or QQ, you’ll want to raise or reraise when you come in.

You can occasionally call raises from the blinds with hands that have potential like pairs or suited connectors, but be careful. Especially if you are just starting out, you do not want to get involved from the blinds much at all if possible, so be prepared to do a lot of folding from the SB and BB.