Bitches 2

This is getting ridiculous.

PokerStars Game #17300429186: Tournament #87680989, $10+$1 Hold'em No Limit - Level IV (50/100) - 2008/05/08 - 23:58:08 (ET)
Table '87680989 1' 9-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: chipleadercm (1640 in chips)
Seat 2: FR Vessant (1410 in chips)
Seat 3: srfdblovrhd (1235 in chips)
Seat 4: brevenge (1044 in chips)
Seat 6: georgiagolf (2635 in chips)
Seat 7: msEvsiNdreAd (4675 in chips)
Seat 8: zookwicket (861 in chips)
brevenge: posts small blind 50
georgiagolf: posts big blind 100
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FR Vessant [Qh Qc]
msEvsiNdreAd: calls 100
zookwicket: folds
chipleadercm: folds
FR Vessant: raises 400 to 500

I have not played a hand in this tourney.

srfdblovrhd: folds
brevenge: folds
georgiagolf: raises 400 to 900

So he has to have AA/KK right?

msEvsiNdreAd: folds
FR Vessant: raises 510 to 1410 and is all-in
georgiagolf: calls 510

Nope. He has AJs. Well, I raised instead of shoving in the hope of getting shoved over, so I got what I asked for, and...

*** FLOP *** [9d As 4d]

Every. Fucking. Time. It's insane. I am not kidding. QQ is a premium hand and I am losing with it.

And again, the other guy's play is simply terrible. He must fold his hand. He is guaranteed to be behind me. Yes, he got lucky this time. Please do not comment that, because yes, I can see that he did. But his hand is a big dog against mine.

It is really sucking now. I don't feel I'm playing badly at all. Clearly, I didn't play this hand badly.

Next tourney, I shove over a minraise with AK. He has 88. I hit the A on the flop. River 8. I mean, wtf?

Sigh

At this point, I decided to give up for the day.


PokerStars Game #17299350536: Tournament #87676215, $10+$1 Hold'em No Limit - Level III (25/50) - 2008/05/08 - 22:58:01 (ET)
Table '87676215 1' 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: VILAGEIDIOT1 (2200 in chips)
Seat 2: gapoker#9 (1160 in chips)
Seat 4: TheKamikaze (1625 in chips)
Seat 5: Geissler1987 (725 in chips)
Seat 6: FR Vessant (1210 in chips)
Seat 8: hunterblue (4885 in chips)
Seat 9: bullwild (1695 in chips)
hunterblue: posts small blind 25
bullwild: posts big blind 50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FR Vessant [As Kh]
VILAGEIDIOT1: folds
gapoker#9: folds
TheKamikaze: calls 50
Geissler1987: calls 50
FR Vessant: raises 1160 to 1210 and is all-in

This is pretty standard. It's not a huge pot, but it's about 15% of my stack and I can take it with low risk.

hunterblue: folds
bullwild: folds
TheKamikaze: calls 1160

He has QQ. His play is beyond retarded. If I limp and the blinds also limp, he is playing QQ fivehanded. Any K or A comes, he's going to have to fold to a bet.

Gotta raise your big pairs. It's stupid to limp and hope someone else raises for you, because you so rarely get a decent hand that wasting it is fucking criminal.

Geissler1987: folds
*** FLOP *** [Kd 9h Ks]

Hooray. At last the poker gods have given me a break.

*** TURN *** [Kd 9h Ks] [5h]
*** RIVER *** [Kd 9h Ks 5h] [Qc]

Oh no, I see they haven't.

Bitches

This is just routine but QQ is becoming my least-favourite hand by a street.

PokerStars Game #17297980657: Tournament #87669967, $10+$1 Hold'em No Limit - Level II (15/30) - 2008/05/08 - 21:49:34 (ET)
Table '87669967 1' 9-max Seat #9 is the button
Seat 1: alksolo (1050 in chips)
Seat 2: FR Vessant (1425 in chips)
Seat 3: Timberland31 (1135 in chips)
Seat 4: loosh23 (2355 in chips)
Seat 6: xgocubsx (4435 in chips)
Seat 8: omandon (1595 in chips)
Seat 9: TGAVALLEY (1505 in chips)
alksolo: posts small blind 15
FR Vessant: posts big blind 30
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FR Vessant [Qd Qh]
Timberland31: folds
loosh23: calls 30
xgocubsx: calls 30
omandon: folds
TGAVALLEY: folds
alksolo: calls 15
FR Vessant: raises 120 to 150

That raise is slightly light, but it's still in the bounds of okay.

loosh23: folds
xgocubsx: calls 120
alksolo: calls 120

They can have anything, but it really doesn't matter. If they have kings, a king will come on the flop. If they have aces, an ace will come. Guaranteed.

*** FLOP *** [Jc Ks 8d]

My heart sinks. I'll probably have to continuation bet at it, and obviously will lose.


alksolo: bets 900 and is all-in

"I have a king."

FR Vessant: folds
xgocubsx: calls 900
FR Vessant said, "that hand just never fcking holds up"

Too true, FR.

*** TURN *** [Jc Ks 8d] [Ad]
*** RIVER *** [Jc Ks 8d Ad] [Jh]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
alksolo: shows [9s Kd] (two pair, Kings and Jacks)

WTF? Limping that shit is bad. Calling a raise is inexcusable.

xgocubsx: shows [7c Kc] (two pair, Kings and Jacks)

Even worse. You can excuse his limp in the first place: it's sooooooted and if you squint he's just about in late position.

Okay, no. You can't excuse limping that shit either. These boys are just going to lose a ton of money.

LOL at shoving the flop, as well. That's terrible. What can I have? If I'm anything like the standard player I have a big ace or a decent pair. I might have KQ.

Well, if I have AK or KQ, you just busted yourself. If I don't, you make no more chips because I simply fold. The guy can only hope to make money from worse kings, and mate, there should not be any worse kings out there.

This is what novice players do. If you can avoid that mistake, you have learned a lesson in poker. In his spot, check to the raiser, who often bets. Then you can shove over with your top pair and win his bet. The downside is the same, but you have the benefit of winning more when you're ahead.

FR Vessant said, "wtf at both calls though"

No coaching FR. We don't actually want them to get better.

alksolo collected 1140 from pot
xgocubsx collected 1140 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2280 | Rake 0
Board [Jc Ks 8d Ad Jh]
Seat 1: alksolo (small blind) showed [9s Kd] and won (1140) with two pair, Kings and Jacks
Seat 2: FR Vessant (big blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 3: Timberland31 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: loosh23 folded before Flop
Seat 6: xgocubsx showed [7c Kc] and won (1140) with two pair, Kings and Jacks
Seat 8: omandon folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: TGAVALLEY (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)

Luckily, xgocubsx gave my chips back a bit later when he called a raise and a cbet with K8 and then checked it down with me. I had AK.

TGAVALLEY also excelled himself by limping QQ at t50. On a T74 flop, he betted 100. I called with A7s, which was loose, but I felt he might actually not have me beat. He betted the same turn and river, and I didn't improve. I think on balance it was worth 300 chips to find out that he's a complete moron, although truth to tell, had he bet more, I would have lost less.

***

Sadly, xgocubsx's retarded play ended up hurting him less than me. He limped on the bubble and I pushed over with AT. I am taking the risk doing that that he will call me wide--he had 6K chips and I had 900, and he'd limped for 100--but the upside is that if he does, I crush him. Well, I crushed him preflop, sure enough, because he called with J8s, but not so much postflop, because he sucked out to an 8.

It's possible that just checking would have been best there, but I was outstacked by all three fish, so what can I do? I'm going to have to take a stand somewhere with a decent hand, and I suppose it's better with 900 chips than it ever will be with 500.

blah

I fucking hate PokerRoom. I definitely have the doomswitch there. In the space of five minutes, I get it all in with KK on a Q high flop, am called by AJ, which turns an A, then get it in with 88 when I hit a set on a twoflush flop, get called by AA that has one of the flush suit and then he hits runner diamonds to make the flush. Totally unreal. What can you do? I am absolutely miles ahead both times, and I end up busted twice. This is like the bad run I had last month, just quite amazing bad beats one after another.

I mean, look. In the first hand, the guy doesn't even have a pair. Not even a draw. Nothing. He is just shoving wildly. In the second, the guy completely forgot to raise preflop, then got it in when I'm crushing him, and sucked out in a truly bizarre way. Ah well. You can complain to the poker gods, you can wail and moan and bitch, but what you can't do is scrub out the results in your ledger. Sometimes the horrible retards take your money and that's just poker.

Lesson: EV

Poker involves wagering. Yes, you know it is a form of gambling, in which you put up x dollars as your stake, and the prize is to win y dollars. But every action you take in poker is also a wager.

It's easy to understand what your expectation is for a series of tourneys. Say you play the $10 games with no "rake" (the vig you must pay the poker room for running the table). You have an ROI of 10%. So if you play 100 games, you expect to net (10 x 1.1) x 100 = $1100. Divide that by 100 and you get $11. So your "expected value" for each game is $11. Hang on, you're thinking, you cannot win $11 in an STT with a standard payout scheme. Right. EV does not correspond with immediate reward. It is your average return over the series you're considering. You are going to win some and lose some, but over the whole 100 games, you'll average out to taking $11 a game. In poker, we talk about the long term. This is basically the series of games we will play in our lives, and it doesn't have a term. It's not infinite, but it's not bounded (because we have no idea how many games it will be). So we think about decisions playing out over that long term.

Say you have a flush draw on the turn. Your chances of catching a flush card on the river are a bit more than 4/1. Now, I'm sure boots will tell you that they are in fact either 100% or 0%, and that's true. The next card either is, or is not, a flush card. And even if it is not yet selected, so will be random, some of the flush cards can be in other guys' hands, so your odds are not actually 4/1. None of that matters. You don't know what the next card is and must make a decision. (And actually, there being fewer or more outs actually in existence is balanced out by other factors, and your expectation is not affected by that.)

So your expectation is that you will get your flush one in five times. But you don't know which of the five times you are going to have! What you can do is consider your expectation as 0.2 (which is just another way of writing 20%, because 20% of the time you expect to win the pot), and make your decision accordingly. Note again that in fact you either will or won't make your flush. You will or won't win the pot. But think about that series of tourneys. In them, you either make $40, $20, $10 or $0, but your expectation for each tourney is not one of those figures, but the figure that describes the proportion of each that you expect: $11.

So when you are considering whether to call with a flush draw, you can look at the pot, and look at the bet you face, and if it pays enough, you call the bet. Why? Let's say we are playing limit, where the bets are fixed. The pot has five bets in it and you face paying one bet to see the river. Let's say that if your flush comes, you will not make any more money because your opponent will just fold. So the pot is paying five to one.

Okay. This time, you may win five for your one or you may just lose your bet. But you don't know which it will be. Over the long term, you will win one out of five though, and you will face this bet many times over the long term. What you can do is take the bet when it favours you every time you are offered it. Then, over the long term, you are bound to profit (so long as the laws of probability don't get overturned by the poker gods). A bet that offers better odds than its probability of coming in is said to have "positive expectation" or is "+EV". In this case, you will win 0.2 x 6 = 1.2 bets, and you have to wager one bet. So long as the return is bigger than the amount you're betting, you're +EV.

What if there were only three bets in the pot? Now your expectation is 0.2 x 4 = 0.8 bets. You expect to lose. (If you're wondering why four bets and not three in that equation; it's because when the flush card comes, you win back your bet if you win.) This sort of bet is -EV. Note again, you may win this time. You may win this one and the next one and the next. But if you keep taking -EV bets, you will lose money.

The odds that the pot offers you by virtue of its size are called "pot odds". In most forms of poker, you are willing to take bets where pot odds are greater than the odds of the outcome being favourable. There are three further considerations though that we can mention briefly. (We'll talk about them in more detail later.) First, your opponent does not always fold on the river. Sometimes you will be paid another bet or bets. You can sometimes factor this into your decision whether to call. In our example the pot odds may be 4/1, indicating a fold, but you figure the other guy, fish that he is, will always call on the river. So you can count on another bet, making your "implied odds" 5/1, giving you a call. This is a subtle concept, because the pot odds are certain, but the implied odds vary depending on many factors. Second, you make wagers in tournaments with tournament chips, not with money, but you must consider your bets in terms of dollars. That's not easy but it's essential, because you cannot replace your chips and must weigh their use correctly. Sometimes, chasing that flush, which you would do in a cash game, will be wrong because although it shows a profit in chips, it doesn't show one in dollars. Third, it's straightforward to draw to a flush and win if you make it, lose if you don't. But you are rarely working out your EV so simply. You don't always know what your opponent has, or what he's drawing to. The best you can do is figure out the "range" he has: the hands he is likely to have, and work out your EV against the range.

What do I mean? Well, let's say you have KK. You raise preflop. Some guy calls. He's quite tight, and (I won't go into how) you figure that 55% of the time he has a smaller pair, 40% of the time he has a big ace and 5% of the time AA. The flop comes A73. You are to act. You want to know whether you should bet. You don't know what he actually has though. But you can do what would be right against his whole range. Let's assume you are pushing or folding and he is calling with everything. Let's say the pot has 500 chips in it and you have 1000 more to bet.

He has 77 or 33 10% of the time (a little less because of course there are a 7 and a 3 on the flop, but we aren't looking for precision here). They have a set, which crushes you, and you will "draw out" on them roughly 9% of the time. Let's say you lose 9% of the time to those pairs.

He has AA 5% of the time, and effectively you're "drawing dead" against AA. (You need to turn and river Ks to beat him. Good luck with that.) So you lose 5% of the time to that.

He has a big ace 40% of the time, and that is beating you. About 9% of the time, you'll draw out on those too, so let's say you lose 35% of the time to them.

He has a smaller pair that is not 77/33 45% of the time. They will draw out on you about 9% of the time, so let's say you lose 5% of the time to them.

You're losing 54% of the time. You expect to win less often than you lose, so you fold right?

Wrong. There is money already in the pot. Don't forget the money already in the pot! Your expectation is .46 x 2500 = 1150. So for your 1000 bet, you expect to win 1150. Of course, you will lose 1000 when he has the hands that beat you and you don't draw out, and win his 1000 plus the 500 in the pot when he has something that you beat. But over the long term, presented with this bet over and over and over, he will have different hands each time. Sometimes, you're crushed; this time, maybe, you're crushed. But you can't know that. So you push, he calls, and...

***

I just need to add a sentence. When we say that 46% of the time you will win the pot, we can also say that your "equity" in the outcome is 46%. Your equity in a hand will shift from street to street, but you always have equity unless you're drawing dead. We say that you have equity vs a particular hand or equity vs a range. Think of equity as your share of outcomes and you have mastered it. Here's a quick example that should make it clear. You have 1000 chips. Villain has 1000 chips. You are going to get it in and he will call. So there are 2000 chips at stake. Now, you figure you will win 60% of the time. So your expectation is .6 x 2000 = 1200 chips, or +200. So we say your EV is 200. It's worth 200 to you to get it in with this guy. Remember, you will not win 200 ever. Only 1000 sometimes. Your equity can be described as 60%, because your "share" of the outcome is 60%, or 1200. But note that equity and EV are not the same thing. Say you and villain were heads up before this hand and it's a winner takes all tourney. Your equity in the tournament was, of course, 50% before you pushed, and will be 100% or 0% after.

So to be clear, equity is your share in the outcome of the tourney or hand, EV is the change in your equity that an action will bring.

Awful bluffs r us

Another truly awful bluff. Villain is 50/17/4 preflop (which means that he puts money into the pot with 50% of his hands, which is extremely loose; raises with 17% of them, which is a lot--he's raising with nearly twice as many hands as I'm even playing; and has an "aggression factor" of 4: this is the ratio of his bets and raises to his checks and calls postflop--it's relative, so if you play 8/4/4, you are fairly aggressive postflop, but at 50/17/4, you are using a machine gun to "fire your bullets"--make bets).

's a
PokerStars Game #17208815955: Tournament #87214767, $10+$1 Hold'em No Limit - Level ItII (15/30) - 2008/05/04 - 22:00:03 (ET)
Table '87214767 1' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: FR Vessant (1670 in chips)
Seat 2: RANDY1726 (1715 in chips)
Seat 3: Ko112233 (2735 in chips)
Seat 4: kcgregg (1155 in chips)
Seat 5: al2401 (1780 in chips)
Seat 7: SCRAAPNBY (1425 in chips)
Seat 8: KAP300 (1205 in chips)
Seat 9: Monteroy (1815 in chips)
RANDY1726: posts small blind 15
Ko112233: posts big blind 30
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FR Vessant [Td As]
kcgregg: folds
al2401: folds
SCRAAPNBY: folds
KAP300: folds
Monteroy: folds
FR Vessant: raises 60 to 90

Folded to me on the button, I'll raise this. If there had been a couple of callers, maybe I'd call behind, but I wouldn't call a raise with it. I'll play with caution postflop.

RANDY1726: calls 75
Ko112233: calls 60

I'd have been perfectly happy to win the blinds, but I'm in position with a decent hand.

*** FLOP *** [Th 4c 9c]

That's a decent flop for me, obv. I have TPTK. However, the board is "wet" (has draws available--a player with two clubs has a flush draw, and QJ, for instance, has a straight draw).

RANDY1726: bets 60

Given his aggro factor, this bet can mean anything from "I have a draw", through "I have a T" to "I have nothing but I think I can get you to fold" and a lot of stops in between. We're not folding top pair here and on this drawy board, we want to make him pay if he's drawing. What you might discount here are hands that actually beat you. He isn't likely to bet them so light, if at all. If he had a set of 4s, he's likely to check it and hope I bet for him.

Ko112233: folds
FR Vessant: raises 150 to 210

So we put in a raise. This is actually a bit light but at the time I was thinking that this would be enough to have him push over anything that was crushing me. I tend to steer clear of getting "committed" (putting in so many chips that I will find it hard to fold) with hands that can easily be beaten. Here, it's largely the possibility of T9 that is giving me pause. That's a hand this guy will certainly call a raise with and while he's more likely to have checked it than bet, it can be in there.

RANDY1726: calls 150

When he calls, I'm pretty sure he has something I beat. I'd consider his likeliest hand a draw, but he could have Tx, 9x or even a 4. A small pair is also an outside possibility.

*** TURN *** [Th 4c 9c] [3h]
RANDY1726: checks
FR Vessant: bets 300

This hand is almost an object lesson in how to bet badly! But I think this is enough to make draws make a mistake and get called by the worse hands that I mostly think he has. With a less drawy board, or a slightly better hand, you might sometimes check behind to keep the pot small, and call a bet on the river or make one if you think your hand is still good. But here I don't mind folding out the draws if he has the sense to muck them.

RANDY1726: calls 300

*** RIVER *** [Th 4c 9c 3h] [7d]
RANDY1726: bets 1115 and is all-in

Whack! Okay. What's his story? It's pretty much "I have J8". It's possible but three things mitigate against it. One, it's one of the less likely hands preflop. He's loose but J8, even suited, doesn't hold a great deal of promise. Two, he's very aggro, so he will be more likely to bluff than most players. Three, and this is the key to this hand, retarded bad players do not often push here, even if their draw comes in, particularly when the straight is somewhat hidden, as it would be here. They are too afraid that you will just fold.

When a bet looks like it wants a fold, it often does.

FR Vessant: calls 1070 and is all-in

I wasn't certain I would win the hand. But I am going to win it a lot more often than not. He won't often have J8, and frankly, if he has two pair on the river, that's just unlucky for me, but I'm never crediting him for one earlier. I think he will put in more money earlier in the hand with two pair, probably on the turn.

*** SHOW DOWN ***
RANDY1726: shows [8s 8d] (a pair of Eights)

So there it is. His play is indefensible on all streets bar preflop.

Sadly, all the great postflop play in the world can be undone in an instant. I lost 1500 of the chips when I raised TT from the button and called a shove from a guy with ATs. His shove was a bit meh given my tightness but whatever. And ultimately I didn't make any money. A couple of times, a bad player rivered me and the second of them I pushed over his bet a bit intemperately. He'd sucked out to a straight unfortunately.

Lesson: starting hands

So we learned what hands are worth the wrong way round, right? Because you don't start with straights and flushes; you start with just two cards.

Well, no. We learn the other way round for two reasons. One, you need to be completely au fait with what beats what. You must not be confused about whether straights beat flushes (they don't) or full boats beat flushes (they do). This is because you need to be able to evaluate the board quickly.

You need to be able always to answer these questions: what hand can I make? what hand is the best? which hands could happen in the next card or two cards? and finally what is my opponent likely to have now, and what is he trying to make?

So you have AQ, a strong starting hand, and you flop QcTd7d, you bet and you are called, you need to know that you are probably best with TPTK, your opponent may have a worse queen or a flush draw, but he can be "trapping" with QT, TT, 77. He might also have 89 for the straight, maybe J9. You have to be aware of the possibilities.

It comes with time. You can't instantly read the board when you're a beginner. It's a skill that you learn (imperfectly: I'm still sometimes surprised by a hidden straight). But you can help yourself with study: save hand histories or ask for mine. Look at hands as they played out. Work out what was the best possible hand, and what people could be drawing to. The more you do it, the better you get at doing it. (If you want help, Father Luke, I will set you drills. Just ask. If you have the time, it's worthwhile to do. Reading the board correctly is a sine qua non of good poker, which is very hard for a novice, but does become easier. In time, we'll have you play some Omaha, because it gets you into the habit.) It is also important to understand, as a first principle, that hand strength is relative. This concept is fundamental in poker, and its importance in STTs cannot be overstated. There are spots in STTS where you cannot play less than aces! This is not because your opponent has a strong hand, but because yours needs to be relatively that strong.

Okay, so you can look at a list of starting hands, and that's fine, but it's very abstract (however, in STTs, having a grasp of the order of hands is important, because you need to be able to rank hands by percentiles). There are more concrete ways to understand starting hand strength.

There are basically three dimensions: high card strength, suitedness, connectedness. In most forms of poker played for high, you should select your starting hands according to these dimensions. The most important is high card strength, overwhelmingly so in STTs, but the other dimensions are also important. (High card strength means how big the cards are. Generally, how big both cards are matters, because if you pair, your other card will be your kicker. KQ is stronger than KJ among other reasons because a queen outkicks a jack. On a jack high board, KJ overtakes KQ though!)

We are going to talk a lot about equity. It's basically your "share" of the pot. It's how much you would expect to win against the range your opponent can have. Equity varies according to the cards on the board, and the range you think your opponent has, but when it comes to starting hands, we care a lot about "hot and cold equity". This is the chance you have of winning if you are all in with your opponent. So we say that AA has 83% equity hot and cold against 72. This means that if you are all in with 72 and you hold aces, you will win 83 times out of 100. (Actually, you may or may not. We are talking probability, so you expect to win 83 tims out of 100, but you can win 50/50 or 100/0 and that's quite possible. However, in poker we weigh our chances by strict probability, even though in principle we would need to play these hands out a million times to converge on our real expectation.

The point is that rankings of hands are less important to us than their equity against each other, and to a lesser extent how they play. Obviously, you can rank hands by their hot and cold equity. AA is the best hand, dominates all others and will win most of the time; 72 is the worst starting hand, will lose most of the time (but if the flop comes 752, the mighty aces are humbled). Learn that lesson: poker is situational. There is no best hand. AA is best preflop, but if you flop 772, AA is drawing to two outs against 72.

But we are thinking about preflop, and going back to our dimensions, high card strength is best. But you must remember that there is another dimension: hands can be made or drawing.

Pairs are by definition made hands. They have value purely by virtue of being pairs.

AK is a strong hand, but 22 beats it. (Hot and cold, 22 beats AKo, and the reason you rarely get it in with 22 is that you are uncertain that your opponent has AK or similar and not a pair.)

Suitedness helps. It adds a few percent to the equity for any hand. You shouldn't underrate the value of being suited, because many decisions will hinge on a percent or two either way, which makes a suited hand considerably stronger than its unsuited equivalent.

Connectedness also helps. 76 are connected. 76s are suited connectors. These hands are stronger than other rag hands because they can make straights with both cards together. Unconnected hands can only make straights with four on the board, which is not only rarer, but makes your hand obvious to opponents. If the board is showing 98652 and you're betting, you probably have a 7.

Heads up, most hands are won by the biggest pair. With experience, this will seem obvious, because you will play so many heads up hands in which no one has even a pair. But it means that AA is strong not only because it is the best starting hand, but also because it will "hold up" often and remain the best hand. (Indeed, like most pairs, it rather has to remain the best hand, because it only has two outs to improve).

So we are clear that AA, KK, QQ are excellent hands, and we can get it in with them fairly confidently.

And JJ and TT are very good starting hands. Sometimes, 99 is too. Remember, few hands start better, and even impressive-looking hands like AQ must catch up with it. At higher blinds, these pairs are all worth playing hard. Not so much early, for reasons I'll discuss when we talk about play at different blinds (in a nutshell, because if you get it in at low blinds, your opponent will tend to have a stronger hand than at higher blinds, because the pressure of blinds and the shorter table mean that he has "opened" his range somewhat--opening your range means to play more hands, and few players don't do that as the table gets "shorter"--has fewer players).

Other pairs have some value, and in early levels can make sets if they flop a mate. That happens about one in nine times, and if you can play cheaply, makes a decent way to try to get a big hand.

This is an important idea when you look at starting hands: you need to think about what hand you're aiming to make with it. Playing 44, you are looking to hit a set. With AA, you are hoping to get it in and watch your opponent hit nothing. Play AK and you are trying to flop an A or a K, to get TPTK. It's the ultimate "top pair hand", that is, a starting hand whose aim is to hit top pair and have that hold up.

These hands are viable because top pair wins most hands heads up. A word of caution though. If you don't raise AK/AQ, and sometimes you don't, and there's a crowd to the flop, TPTK will often be beaten when there's heavy action.

There are lots of ways to rank the starting hands, because they do differently against different ranges, and as I noted, some play better than others--AK is weaker than 22 all in, but you'd rather have it to start with, because if the board comes Q73, you will never think 22 is good, even though it sometimes will be, whereas you might bet AK. The chart here is pretty decent. I don't suggest trying to memorise it or anything, but it will help you to get a feel for what is strong and what isn't. Don't worry about the figures. We'll come to that soon.

One reason not to memorise the chart (apart from, obviously, that it's very hard to do so, and isn't necessary at this point) is that it's better to think about what's good and why.

Let's take a hand as an example. KJs. It's a very decent hand but why?

1. It has two high cards. A pair of kings will win many pots, particularly heads up, and a pair of jacks is also a decentish hand. King high will win some pots all in, but you must take care: it is behind all aces, even the worst of them.
2. It is suited. Suited cards make a flush 6.5% of the time. That's huge because a flush is a very strong hand, which you will just about always be willing to "stack off" (get your whole stack in) with.
3. It is connected. There is one gap between K and J, so we call it a onegap connector, or a suited onegapper. KT is a twogapper. K9 is a threegapper, which is as wide a gap as you can have and still make a straight on the flop. The fewer gaps, the better. KQ is better than KJ not just because it has higher cards, but because they are closer together. I'd consider JT and K9 to have about the same value, because what JT lacks in high card strength, it makes up for in connectedness.

Let's look at another hand, which many low-limit players overrate: ATo

1. It has some high card strength. The A is obviously as high as it gets, but in the early levels, the T is often a liability not a plus. Hit your ace and you have TP with a T kicker. Given that all your opponents will play the big aces, you can easily make a secondbest hand with it. You are generally happier with a middling ace to hit your kicker than the ace. AT is a stronger hand on a T high board than it is on an A high board.
2. It is not suited, so it will not make many flushes.
3. It is a threegapper, and you will rarely make a straight with it, not only because you need three particular cards to make it (with, say, KQ, you can make straights with AJT and T98, as well as fourcard straights). Those cards are all in the "playing zone" (cards that will often feature in your opponents' hands, because they are playable and you can expect them to be out there if you are "multiway" (more than two players taking the flop)--pretty much T to A).

A final note though. AT is not strong enough to play UTG early in the tourney, and you do not want to call raises with it either, but later in the game it becomes strong enough to play. Remember, hand strength is situational. Against eight other hands, AT may not be strong, but against two, it figures to be the best anyone has.