Hands To Fold In Texas Holdem

Texas Hold'em is always a game you should play with the long term in mind, if your poker hand has a 55/45 advantage compared to your opponents, you can lose it 10 times in a row. But if you play the hand 10,000 times on average you will win 55% (5.500) times.This is. Texas Hold’em is the most popular poker variant in the US. It is also the ranking game internationally, dwarfing other poker games by a long margin. This Poker Hands Guide is based on Texas Hold’em hand rankings, and it will reveal the best-kept secrets to forming winning hand combinations.

• Texas Holdem Hands In Order
• Texas Holdem Starting Hands
• What Hands To Fold In Texas Hold'em
• Hands To Fold In Texas Hold'em

Introduction to Folding

Knowing what hands to fold in poker doesn’t come easy to most players. If you’re reading this article, you’re probably concerned that you play too many hands, call too many raises speculatively or on the contrary, play too tight and need some guidance. We can’t all play like Phil Ivey or Tom Dwan and expect play a wide range of hands profitably. This article will give a basic guide on what hands to fold in poker.

Texas Holdem Hands In Order

Playing Situations, not Just Cards

Before I get into the hand groups you should be folding. Let me preface it by saying that, as your experience, table awareness and proficiency in Texas Hold’em develops, you will look for profitable situations instead of just playing solid poker hands. This is something I always tell players I mentor. But this article is designed to help those of you who are having difficulty with pre flop hand selection and want some general advice on what hands to fold in poker.

Ace Rag

Ace rag is almost definitely the most overplayed and overrated hand in Texas Holdem. Even professionals will occasionally overplay the ace if they’ve been dealt junk for hours. The truth is, unless you are in position or shorthanded, these hands are unlikely to make you any money or help build your stack much.

Texas Holdem Starting Hands

They don’t play particularly well post flop and you are unlikely to extract 3 streets of value if you make top pair. Sometimes when you think you will, you end up finding yourself beat by a bigger kicker.

Low Paint Cards

What Hands To Fold In Texas Hold'em

This may surprise you but the Queen Jack and King Jack hands are not as powerful as you think. Granted, you have two paint cards and have the opportunity to make straights. But, if you are calling raises with these hands, particularly against early position open raises, you are going to find yourself outkicked or against a higher pair.

If a strong player is opening from under the gun and you are tempted to play Queen Jack from the small blind, think again. The range of hands you are likely to be up against have Queen Jack in bad shape.

To make this clearer, if you are against an Ace Jack, Ace Queen or King Queen, you are approx. 25% to win the hand in a showdown. Let’s also not forget you do not have the pre flop lead.

Low Connectors

Hands like 4-5, 6-7 and 3-4 are hands to fold in poker. I make a distinction from suited as they play much better. The offsuit low connectors are unlikely to help your ROI. You may have seen some professionals call raises on High Stakes Poker with these hands. That doesn’t mean they were right to and it doesn’t mean you should. Unless you make a hand stronger than one pair, you are unlikely to feel secure with low connectors so just throw them away.

Hands To Fold In Texas Hold'em

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There are a lot of decisions to be made when you play Texas Hold’em at Bovada Poker. But once your stack gets down to a certain size, your decision is relatively easy: Push or fold. That’s because you don’t have enough chips left to apply leverage if you attempt a standard open-raise. This situation usually happens in No-Limit Hold’em tournaments, although it can happen at the cash tables as well.
Thanks to game theory and computing power, smart poker players have discovered that you can play “unexploitable” poker once you get in these push-fold situations. That means you can make your decisions almost robotically, knowing that the worst you can do in the long run is break even. But how short is short enough to use a push-fold strategy? That’s a matter for debate. Some players will wait until they’re down to 10 big blinds; others will start shoving when they get below 20 big blinds, and still, others will measure their stacks in terms of M instead of big blinds, taking into account the antes that have to be paid during each orbit around the table.

Pushing and Folding for Poker Profit

Push-fold strategies also change depending on the number of players at the table. When it’s heads-up, you’re in the perfect poker game for using these strategies: It’s just you and your opponent, with no need to worry about things like ICM (Independent Chip Model). The more players you add to the table, the more complicated push-fold strategies get.
If you’re serious about winning No-Limit Hold’em poker tournaments, you can find push-fold strategies for heads-up play on the internet. These ranges cover stack sizes from 16 big blinds all the way down to 1.5BB; the shorter you get, the wider range you should be shoving. For example, with 15BB, you should be pushing King-Six offsuit or better, but once you get to 11BB, you should go ahead and push any hand with a King in it. At 7BB, that becomes any Queen.
While you’re figuring out your push-fold strategy, don’t forget that you can also call unexploitably when you’re being put all-in. If your opponent has you covered and shoves when you’re down to 12BB, your recommended calling range includes roughly the top 30% of hands in Hold’em, including all pocket pairs, suited Aces, and Broadway hands.