A starting hand guide can be a helpful tool for rookies just finding out online hold’em poker. New players can benefit from such a firm structure effectively closing out large losses and possibly even turning out a small profit in micro-limit poker site play. However, if you stick to such a limited hand and position range you are almost assured of losing money long-term in internet poker. Unfortunately, this isn’t necessarily the optimum way to earn a considerable hourly rate, and in fact you may well burn through your first deposit waiting for the “ideal” opportunity.
If you are playing ring or cash poker games online, then this reality should sink in rather quickly. The dilemma with stringently using a starting hand guide is that you cannot appraise given conditions in a given hand before that hand actually occurs. So you won’t find a hand like J4os anywhere on any opening hand guide, but there may very well be situations where you need to play this hand in NL poker online.
The underlying difficulty with following a firm book approach, is that you become the most obvious player to read at the table. What happens when you are an effortless read? You begin to lose pots because you get pushed off hands, strong players can more accurately gauge your pocket cards, positional tactics can be used against you, resulting in your strong hands will not getting paid off the way you need them to, in order to be a profitable player.
“When using a starting hand guide, you MUST also vary your play so as not to be so obvious…”
Hence the need to add a wider raising range and positional moves to your game. For instance, you could raise with a hand like J7s from early position whenever you are dealt that hand. You could also call a lot more in late position with a wide range of hands, as long as it’s comparatively economical for you to see the flop. If you can manage your entry costs for marginal hands and make positional plays against weak tight players you will have done all that you need to in order to create a puzzling profile of yourself.
And as a result you will set up for yourself the opportunity to win a huge pot from time to time, which will help you advance to the big money, or create long-term positive EV for you in no limit poker games. Just remember, when using a starting hand guide, you MUST also vary your play so as not to be so obvious.
