Ever since I started playing NLH I have incorporated a little game in which I try to guess exactly what two cards my opponent has in the hole. I can usually narrow it down to a very few possibilities, and on occasion I have ventured a guess out loud when I feel confident about it. Boy, did I freak the other players out when I would guess my main opponent's Q-Q and he would then flip his Q-Q faceup and say, "How in the world does he do that?"

How in the world do I do it? I'm able to do it because I practice observation, logic, and deductive reasoning while I play in the game. By the time someone has acted on his hand three or four times, a lot of information has been made available. How did he bet it before the flop? How much did he bet, and what did he seem to want his opponent to do in this hand? Did he look weak or strong? Exactly how weak or strong did he appear? What did he have the last time he acted this way? How did the flop alter his demeanor? Was he doing any acting that I could see right through? And of course the cards on the board figure heavily in my assessments.

Usually, all the information I gather in this way helps me form a mental picture of my opponent's hand. I'm blessed with an excellent poker memory as well (I still remember hands that I played 17 years ago, and all the details—not just hands of today or yesterday), and all that helps the process too. So I could narrow it down to, say, a pair of tens, jacks, or queens. Then I would think for another few seconds and refine my guess on the basis of the way my opponent had acted in the past during a hand that I witnessed. Finally, I would throw out my guess, "You have pocket queens in the hole, don't you?" I became so good at this little trick that for a long time the other players stopped trying to bluff me. (This was awfully nice for me, but on the other hand I wasn't picking off anyone else's bluffs either!)

Trying to determine the cards your opponent holds is a great game when you play poker, and it will help your reading skills immeasurably. If you're bad at it at first, don't worry your reads will get better and better. Practice makes perfect! Daniel Goleman claims in his book EQ: Emotional Intelligence that "certain 'star qualities' are learnable." (Goleman believes that many of the characteristics that have made some people very successful can be studied and learned.) I believe that reading people is a learnable "star quality" (characteristic), although I concede that some people can take it further than others. In any case, you'll improve your reading skills a lot with practice. And when you're way off on a guess, you'll begin to see why. ("Oh yeah, I forgot that he reraised before the flop with that hand.")

• Poker Beginners – Trapping With The Top Four Hands (0)
• Poker Beginners – Reraising J-j, 10-10, Or 9-9 Before The Flop (0)
• Poker – Intermediate Nlh Theory: Adding A-x Suited (0)

Now we'll simply add A-x suited to the mix of hands that you play. The ramifications of adding these hands are two: you can get yourself into trouble when you hit an ace or the x with an A-x suited hand, and you will occasionally make an ace-high flush.

Try not to lose too much money when you hit an ace with your A-x suited hand. In NLH most of the value of A-x suited comes when you hit the hand hard, as when you make a flush, two pair, or trips (when you make trips with the x card, it's hard for anyone to notice). When you hit the ace only, as with [V|-p*] and a flop of A-K-2, then watch out! Don't get over involved in this situation, because anyone putting in big bets against you will almost certainly have you beat, unless he's bluffing. In limit Hold'em you can just call someone down in a situation like this, without doing too much damage to your chips, but in no-limit doing that could cost you a big chunk of your chips.

When you do hit your hand hard, then you need to figure out how to win the maximum number of chips with it. You should also be thinking about protecting your hand, especially when you draw a flop of [*»|-p»]-[V] and you have 0-[*»]. In this case, your opponents could be drawing to a straight or a flush. Keep this in mind when you think about betting a small amount to lure your opponents into the pot. The funny thing is that you want action with this hand and this flop, but you can't just let someone beat you for free. If you knew that your opponents didn't have a straight or a flush draw, then you could check on the flop, hoping for a lot of action on the next two rounds of betting. Betting out with a hand like this may cause someone with a drawing hand to raise you, and now you can reraise and win the pot right then and there.

• Poker Beginners – Reraising J-j, 10-10, Or 9-9 Before The Flop (0)
• Poker Beginners – Trapping With The Top Four Hands (0)
• Poker – If You Hold A-a, K-k, Q-q, Or A-k Before The Flop – Bet It All (0)

J-J, 10-10, and 9-9 are strong NLH hands, and you should reraise with them when someone raises before the flop. With these three hands you really want to use the reraise to win the pot before the flop, because you're probably winning at that point and because these hands are very vulnerable to overcards on the flop. Sometimes, when you smell weakness in your opponents, you can make a stand with one of these three hands and put in all your chips. In general, though, you want to reraise someone else before the flop, and if he or someone else puts in another raise (a third raise) over the top of you, you should just throw your hand away. These three hands are usually in a lot of trouble when an opponent puts in the dreaded third raise! You're roughly a 4Vi-to-1 underdog with an underpair against an overpair in Hold'em. (The exact odds depend on which two pairs you're comparing, but 41/2 to 1 is close enough for most table estimations.)

Beginners: Pairs 8-8 and under and A-Q—Three Different Theories
Let's examine three ways these eight hands (8-8, 7-7, 6-6, 5-5, 4-4, 3-3, 2-2, and A-Q) might be played in NLH. In my view, these small pairs and A-Q are the kinds of hands that you want to take a flop with; thus they are hands worth one raise before the flop, or even worth making the first raise yourself. If you're raising with one of these hands, then raise about the size of the pot (this is discussed above in PLH). So you can just make the first raise with one of these hands and, hopefully, win the pot when everyone folds before the flop. But you don't want to put in very much money with these kinds of hands before the flop. Ideally, you want to call a small raise (or the initial blind bet) or make a pot-size raise yourself before the flop, and then hit your hand on the flop (a set is a great hand) and win a huge pot! Again, my theory is that you want to call a small raise before the flop or make a pot-size raise before the flop to try to win the pot before the flop.

Frank Henderson's theory about this type of hand (Henderson is a noted player on the poker circuit) is to call one raise before the flop (on this much we agree). But Frank doesn't like to try to win the pot before the flop with these kinds of hands by raising the pot before the flop. Rather, he likes to just call before the flop and hope to win a big pot when he flops his set. So Frank wants to try to lose small with these hands when he misses them and win big if he hits them, by keeping other players in the pot before the flop. Actually, this theory sounds pretty good to me! The only downside is that he doesn't win as many pots before the flop. Maybe this is OK, because the pots you win with a raise before the flop tend to be pretty small anyway.

The megalomaniac theory of playing these types of hands is always to raise or reraise before the flop. Don't discount this "megalo" theory out of hand, because it works very well for a lot of players. These megalo players are superaggressive and will try to win every pot they play before the flop. If a megalo gets hold of some chips, he can make the other players at his table misera megalo player than a supertight player any day in an NLH tournament. The megalos tend to do well in NLH tournaments because they're always picking up chips; but in the side games they tend to get crushed, as the more patient pros sit back and wait for the megalos to overplay their hands against them. The reason why megalos do better in NLH tournaments than in the side games is that they steal a ton of antes in NLH tourneys.

So we have three different NLH theories as far as playing small pairs and A-Q are concerned. I rarely play the megalo theory, because my opponents expect me to play that way (sometimes you need to play that way if you are at a table full of mice). Rather, I play the theory I've laid out above, and I sometimes use Frank Henderson's theory as well. In other words, most of the time I will put in the first raise with these types of hands, but sometimes I'll just call with them before the flop.

• Poker – Intermediate Nlh Theory: Adding A-x Suited (0)
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• Poker – If You Hold A-a, K-k, Q-q, Or A-k Before The Flop – Bet It All (0)

The trapping theory for NLH applies mostly when you have A-A or K-K. Some players like to just call someone else's raise or reraise before the flop when holding A-A or K-K, in the hope that the move will trap someone into giving them all his chips after the flop.

This is a dangerous theory with a risk-reward hazard that any expert in game theory would love to look at! Most of the time you should just go ahead and reraise with A-A or K-K and hope that your opponent either moves all-in right there with a hand like J-J or Q-Q (which makes you a 4Vi-to-l favorite) or folds his hand. Reraising is the safe way to play A-A and K-K; it prevents you from losing all your chips in some situations. You'll lose them all less often when you reraise with A-A or K-K, but you'll also usually get less action on these hands. When trapping works out, you look brilliant; but when you bust yourself trapping someone, you look like an idiot!

The trap works like a charm when you have A-A or K-K and your opponent has a hand like A-J, and the flop is You may force your opponent with A-J into losing all his chips in this scenario because he may think you have K-J or a flush draw.
Trapping with aces can go badly for you, however, when your opponent hits his flop really well, as when he raises with 0-0 and you just call and the flop is K-Q-4: now you can kiss your chips good-bye. (However, think of the chips you'll win trapping with K-K on that same flop.)

Your trap could get uglier still if the raiser has 0-0, and now the flop is 5-6-7! In both these scenarios of trap gone bad, you would have won the pot had you reraised before the flop, but instead of winning the pot before the flop you have trapped yourself into losing all your chips! I rarely trap with any big hand, but some circumstances encourage me to try it. Trapping with aces is obviously safer than trapping with kings.

• Poker Beginners – Reraising J-j, 10-10, Or 9-9 Before The Flop (0)
• Poker – Intermediate Nlh Theory: Adding A-x Suited (0)
• Poker – If You Hold A-a, K-k, Q-q, Or A-k Before The Flop – Bet It All (0)

When you have one of these top four hands in NLH, you can almost always justify shoving all your chips out there before the flop. There are very few exceptions to this advice, and virtually no exceptions for the beginning NLH player. For the more sophisticated player, you will, once in a blue moon, be wise to fold Q-Q or A-K before the flop. If you're to do this, however, you should have some very strong evidence that your opponent holds K-K or A-A. The evidence might be that someone has made a big raise and then a mouse has moved all-in for a mountain of chips (for characterizations of my animal types—the mouse, elephant, lion, jackal, and eagle—see page 33 in Chapter 3). A mouse reraising someone with all his chips should set off an alarm or two in your head!

• Poker Beginners – Trapping With The Top Four Hands (0)
• Poker Beginners – Reraising J-j, 10-10, Or 9-9 Before The Flop (0)
• Poker – Intermediate Nlh Theory: Adding A-x Suited (0)

Even though there are some differences, I'm going to treat NLH and PLH as if they were the same game, for the duration of this discussion. As is always the case in Hold'em, supertight is right for beginning players while they learn to get their feet wet! Therefore I recommend that you restrict yourself to the "top ten hands" and pairs only while you learn the game. In other words, play only the 13 pairs (aces down through deuces), plus A-K and A-Q before the flop in NLH. Although my top ten hands for limit Hold'em do not include the small pairs (2-2, 3-3, 4-4, 5-5, or 6-6), these pairs can win you far, far greater pots in NLH when you "flop a set" (hit three of a kind with them on the flop)—much more than you can win in limit poker. So my "NLH fifteen" are all the pairs, plus A-K and A-Q.

The idea behind playing only the NLH fifteen hands is that you will be playing hands that will win you big pots. These are the hands that you'll most often double up with: put your $210 into the pot and win a pot of $420+). The NLH fifteen strategy is very conservative but very effective against other beginners. To win NLH tournaments or larger NLH side games, you would need to play more types of hands, but here I'm addressing beginners' play.

The "NLH fifteen" strategy is simple. With these hands, you'll put yourself in some very good situations. You can "double up" when you flop a set. You can double up by getting your money into the pot with A-A, K-K, Q-Q, or A-K before the flop. You can even double up with 9-9, 10-10, or J-J, after the right kind of flop. The best thing about sticking to this strategy, at least in the near term, is that the game becomes easier when you play poker this tight.

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• Poker Beginners – Reraising J-j, 10-10, Or 9-9 Before The Flop (0)
• Poker – Intermediate Nlh Theory: Adding A-x Suited (0)