03- 2-04, LearnTexasHoldem:

Playing Hand Groupings...

Question:You presented a modified (w.r.t. the Sklansky list) set of hand groupings. How do you recommend that these are played from various positions? Thanks again for your time; your site is quite useful....I hope. I have not played Texas Holdem for real money yet.

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Answer: I just answered a question regarding hand groupings a few minutes ago in another question below so you may want to check that out first. I'll go into it a little more here though since you are the perfect example of a new player looking for strategy and finding the hand groupings. There are books that take the hand groupings and then assign strategy to them based on the number of people in so far, your position and the bet to you (1 bet, 2 bets, etc).

For example, they will take the first three positions and say that only the top two hand groupings should be played and when they are you should come in for a raise. While I recommended you read whatever you can get your hands on, my impression of books like this are that they are written for the sake of having something to write about (to sell books). The problem is that no two hands are the same. No two tables are the same. No two players are the same.

Against some players it may be incorrect to call an early position raise preflop with when you have AQ like "Inside The Poker Mind" by John Feeney says. He even goes on to say if you make this move he would love you in his game (basically calling you an idiot). The problem is that not everyone plays the same way. I just played with a bald Mexican guy recently who raised every hand he was in on preflop (33, AA, AK, 99, 44, KJ, etc). Now should I not play AQ against him? Of course not. I'll be in there against him everytime with my AQ.

What I'm getting at here is that you should understand why some hands do well at certain times and others don't. Then it will become automatic because you won't just look at a raise in front of you as "this person has Aces, Kings or AK", you'll also take into account the rest of their play. Don't let things like hand groupings imprison you. You have a mind and it can adapt. Adapting is the key element in being a winning player, not memorizing hand groupings.

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