Do not play too many hands
This is the classic mistake of the beginner. If you are playing too many hands, if effectively means that you are playing too many weak starting hands. As a result, you will often find your self having to stage come-from-behind victories to show a profit on any given night. This may occur every now and again, but over the long run, the stronger starting hands will win more often than the weaker starting hands and this is effectively why playing too many hands will cost you money in the long run.
For example, if you have 7-5 off suit and your opponent has A-10 suited, your opponent will win approximately 66% of time and you will win approximately 33% of the time. As a result, you will win more hands playing starting cards like A-10 suited as opposed to starting cards like 7-5 off-suit.
This ultimately means that you will need to exercise the big “P” of poker: Patience. Wait for those good quality starting hands, even if it means that you have to fold 20 hands in row. Don’t get involved in too many pots where you are an underdog. Wait for the right hands in the right situation.
One of the other, more salient, reasons why beginners shouldn’t play substandard cards is because you don’t know how to play them if they are indeed in front. It takes a lot of experience and skill to work out when your hand is better than your opponent’s hand and it takes courage to play correctly when you are in front. For example, if you have 7-5 off-suit and your opponent has A-10 suited and the flop is J-7-3, there is a 70% chance that your 7-5 off suit will wind up winning the pot. As a result, you should be putting in as many bets as possible to extract the maximum profit from your opponent while you are a favourite. But most beginners will often (a) fear that their opponent flopped a pair of jacks, and/or (b) they cannot read their opponents well enough to determine whether they have the best hand. If you are a beginner, do not feel embarrassed if you haven’t mastered the ability to put opponents on a hand with a high degree of accuracy. It takes a lot of experience and even then, you never get it 100% correct. Even the masters like Johnny Chan and Phil Ivey occasionally put their opponent on the wrong hand. So if you are a bit tentative about reading opponents, don’t worry – just play the mathematics by sticking mainly to strong starting hands. It’s better to be a small winner with solid cards than a large losing by attempting to exercise a skill that you haven’t mastered. With experience, you’ll feel more comfortable reading opponents and only then can you begin to ‘open up your game’ (by playing more starting hands).
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