"The end depends upon the beginning." I heard that line in a movie recently and it certainly applies to Hold 'em poker, although that's not what the movie was about. At best, it's extremely difficult to make a comeback if you enter the pot of a Hold 'em game with a bad hand. I see it all the time and it happens, I guess, because so many people feel about poker like they do about Blackjack; "it's all luck, anyway, so what's the difference?" Well, if you've studied my Blackjack lessons the least little bit, you know it's not "all luck" by a long shot. Sure, there is a luck factor that we cannot deny (I prefer to call it "variance") but making the mathematically proper play for each and every hand goes a long way toward reducing the luck factor in Blackjack and that's what we call playing Basic Strategy. Unfortunately, playing Basic Strategy alone will not give you an edge over the casino - which is why my Blackjack lessons also teach you how to count the cards - but the proper Basic Strategy for a given set of rules in a Blackjack game will reduce the casino's edge over you to a minimum; generally 0.5% or even less.
Hold 'em poker also has a "basic strategy" and it begins with the first two cards you're dealt in the game, your "pocket" or "hole" cards. (I suppose that "pocket" cards is more the poker expression, so I'll try to use that when I'm talking about a player's two face-down cards in a Hold 'em game, but forgive me now and then when I lapse into calling them "hole" cards). Anyway, it's easy to imagine that if you were always dealt a pair of "pocket" Aces, you would win tons of $$$ at Hold 'em. Of course, it wouldn't be long before no one would play against you, but you get the idea. Great cards in the pocket are the start of a great hand. In poker, as in Blackjack, great hands win most of the time. Not all of the time, mind you, just most of the time. We don't always win with a hand of 20 versus a dealer's 6 in Blackjack, nor will we always win with AA ("pocket rockets" in poker slang) in Hold 'em, but it's still a good way to start.
So, how do you make sure you have a good start for a Hold 'em poker hand? Well, that's the beauty of the game of poker. If you don't like your first two cards, you throw them away! It's somewhat like the surrender rule in Blackjack, except it doesn't cost as much. If you're familiar with surrender, you can stop the play by giving up half your bet and, if surrender is allowed in the casino where you're playing, you should do it whenever the mathematics say you'll win less than 50% of the time. But 50% is a fairly steep price to pay for getting out of the hand. However in poker, it's not nearly that much. In most poker games with 8 to 10 players, you'll have to post a "small blind" and "big blind" bet only about once every 8-10 hands. All of the other hands you'll get cost you nothing to throw away, so in, say, a $10/$20 game with a $5 small blind bet and a $10 big blind bet, it'll cost you only $15 for each "round" of 8-10 hands to toss them. That's a little more that $1.50 per hand and, with a $10 minimum bet per round, the percentage is only 15-20% if you always fold. It would be stupid to always fold, of course, but I want to contrast this with surrender in Blackjack where it would cost you 50% of your total bets if you always did it.
The point I'm trying to make here is that you do not have to play poor cards in a Hold 'em poker game, but most beginners do. The wise player enters the pot on his or her own terms or s/he simply doesn't play. This takes a certain amount of patience that many beginners seem to lack ("Hell, I'm here to play Hold 'em poker, not Fold 'em poker") and you can take advantage of that. Just as it takes patience for the count in a 6-deck Blackjack game to get into positive territory, so it is with Hold 'em. Good pocket cards don't come along on every deal, so you've got to fold a lot if you expect to make any $$$ from this game. There's no arguing that the game of Hold 'em poker is much more complicated than the game of Blackjack, but both use decks of 52 cards and both are subject to mathematical analysis, so it's actually possible for us to determine which sets of pocket cards are worth playing and which are not.
(Source: GameMaster)
