Before you even think about how to play a particular spot, you need to decide which hands to get involved with in the first place. This doesn’t always seem like a straightforward decision, but thankfully it’s easy enough to learn simple ranges that will carry you through.

Armed with the knowledge of starting hand ranges, you can then make adjustments based on the situation that you’re faced with. Such as your opponent’s tendencies. Let’s jump right in.

Stop doing this when choosing your starting hands

Before we talk about how to understand and learn starting hands in poker, first you’ll need to undo any damaging mistakes and reverse your bad habits. New players tend to fall into one of two traps: raising only premium hands or being way too loose and never folding.

With all hand ranges, balance will be the key. Your range should include some strong hands, along with weaker hands or bluffs so that your range is somewhat unpredictable. But that doesn’t mean opening trash, especially not from out of position.

Here are the three main errors to watch out for when levelling up your hand selection:

• Raising absolute trash – Don’t do it! Raising trash from any position is nearly always a big mistake.
• Raising too many hands from early position – From early position, you still have lots of players to get through and you’ll have a disadvantage post-flop when called. It’s a mistake to raise too wide from early position.
• Only raising strong hands in position – When in late position, however, you have less players to get through. And a potential post-flop advantage. So you can afford to loosen up your range considerably. You’ll be missing lots of spots if you don’t adjust to position.

Types of hands, position and avoiding trash

You might find it useful to break down all of the possible poker hands into types or categories. This will help you to level up your hand selection, as you can group combos when thinking about whether to enter the pot.

Here are the possible poker starting hands, broken down into types:

Premium pairs – A pair held in your hand preflop is a pocket pair. Premium pocket pairs, such as pocket aces, kings, queens and jacks are the strongest starting hands in the game and can be raised from any position.

Medium pairs – From around pocket eights to pocket tens are considered medium pairs. They usually have good equity against a typical range. And they can be raised from most positions. Although you might fold out low-medium pairs from under the gun.

Small pairs – Small pocket pairs from deuces to sevens are typically only good for set mining. It’s very likely you’ll face one or more overcards on the board post-flop. Although they can be set mined from middle position in some situations, they are most playable in late position.

Other premium hands – Along with premium pairs, the strongest Broadway hands are up there as being playable from any position. Hands like AK and AQs. Others like AJ and KQ are more borderline and can sometimes be folded in early position. All of these hands are a standard raise from middle or late position.

Broadways – Aside from the premiums, other Broadway hands include KJ, QJ, JT and so on. These hands play well if they are suited, as you’ll have outs for flushes, straights and overcards. Can easily be raised from middle and late position, sometimes from early position.

Suited connectors – Suited hands like T9, 98, 87 and so on are known as suited connectors. They are not very strong hands, but can transform into monsters if you hit the flop and make excellent bluffs as part of a wider range. You can raise these from late position and a few of the stronger combos are playable from middle position.

One-gap suited connectors – One-gap suited connectors are similar to suited connectors. But they have a gap in the middle which makes it harder to make a straight. They can typically be raised from late position, such as on the button or cutoff, but will be folded from other positions.

Suited aces – Suited aces also make great positional raises, as you can steal blinds, make top pair, or flop the nut flush draw. Aces with weak kickers are, however, easily dominated, so more care is needed when raising these from earlier position. From late position, suited kings and queens also become playable hands.

Trash hands – As we mentioned, you don’t want to play trash as part of your starting hand selection. Even from late position, there’s always a percentage of hands that you should fold. These are the ones. Usually unsuited, unconnected, with no broadways or bad kickers. Fold, fold, fold…

Hand selection according to position

You’ll notice from looking at the different types of hands that your overall starting hand selection is very dependent on your position. Let’s take a look at how that hand selection looks when you are in early, middle and late position:

• Early position – From early position, you can only typically raise an average of around 10 percent of starting hands. This includes your premium pairs, strongest medium pairs, premium broadways. And a very small selection of bluffs to balance the range.
• Middle position – From middle position, you can open up your range to include more Broadway hands, medium pairs, and the strongest suited connectors. As well as strong suited aces.
• Late position – From late position, such as the button, you can raise around 50% of poker hands or more profitably. Which includes all pairs, sorts of suited connectors and one-gappers, suited and off-suit aces, suited kings and queens, and other off-suit hands.

Adjusting your hand selection to opponent

The final tip for levelling up your starting hand selection is to always be willing to adjust according to the table dynamics. And to individual player tendencies. By all means learn the GTO (Game Theory Optimal) hand selection ranges, but then change this according to what’s happening in the game.

In general, you want to play slightly tighter than average when the table is loose. This will allow you to get more value from strong hands and avoid marginal spots.

By the same token, you want to play looser when the table is tight, which will allow you to find success stealing pots and bluffing flops.

As well as overall table dynamics, focus on individual players, especially those who you’re likely to play a lot of pots against. For example, it’s useful to have a good idea of how the big blind will react when you raise from the button.

By learning pre-flop starting hand selections based on position, then adjusting them based on factors like stack sizes and player tendencies, you’ll be well on your way to levelling up your game.