# Starting Hands and Position

When a hand starts you have an important decision to make: whether to call the initial blind bet and play the hand, or fold the hand without investing anything. If you are the blind of course you have no choice but to put money in initially, but you have a similar decision if someone has raised before it gets to you.

### Starting Hands

The hands you decide not to fold are called your starting hands. The major factors which you should take into account when deciding which hands to play are:

- The strength of your hand
- Whether the bet has been raised and by how much before it gets to you
- How many people are in, or you feel are likely to be in
- Your position in relation to the dealer
- The style of your opponents, how aggressive they are and what hands they tend to play

The relative importance of these factors and the exact set of starting hands you should play is a hotly debated topic in poker books and articles. There is no absolutely correct way to decide these things as even against the exact same opponents two wildly different styles could both be profitable.

In general you should try to play your strongest hands. Hand strength pre-flop can be a slippery concept however as hands that play well against many opponents are not necessarily the same as hands that play well against few opponents. Typically high cards and high pocket pairs play well against few opponents where you will be hoping to win with a high pair, against many opponents cards suited connectors. Holes cards of the same suit that are in sequence--for example 9 and 8 of clubs--play well as you are hoping to make a bigger hand like a straight or flush. Against a full table it is often recommended that new players adopt a very tight strategy--that is playing only the best cards pre-flop or approximately the top 25% of hands.

Poker Academy shows your played hands percentage in the sidebar. You can try picking a target percentage and then playing to that style by montoring your played hand percentage. Even if you decide you wish to play a tight strategy its good to experiment with other styles for special cases, like playing short-handed at the end of a tournament or playing risk-free poker when you are very close to making the money in a tournament.

### Position

Position is a very important factor to consider in both fixed and no limit Texas Hold'em, but especially in no limit. It refers to how close you are to the dealer. People in early position (the two blinds and the two seats after them) always act first on the flop, turn and river. Mid-position (spots 5, 6, and 7) have the advantage of seeing what the early position players do but still have players after them which are unknown quantities. Late-position is the most advantageous as you have the most information before it is your turn. The best position is being last to act, which is the dealer position (also called the button).

In order to take advantage of the late positions, typically more hands are played in late position than in any other position, and only the best hands are played in early position. You should try to very occasionally mix in a couple moderate hands in early position, otherwise your opponents will too easily be able to figure out what you do have when you bet. Conversely, you should watch how many hands your opponents are playing in various positions. If they are playing only 1 out of 20 hands in early position you can be fairly sure that when they do play they are starting with a strong hand.

### Advisors

The advisors in Poker Academy will give you recommendations on which hands to play, try them out and see what starting hands you are most comfortable playing. Another way of looking at it is that you should play hands pre-flop that your playing style does well with after the flop. Getting experience with Poker Academy is a good way of figuring out what those hands are.