When I started learning to play Texas Hold'em, I was advised to play tight while learning the basics of the game. This advice was corroborated by several of the resources that I checked and backed up by some sound reasoning. The most important traits a player needs to develop in order to win are patience and discipline. Limiting your hand selection will help you do this. You will be throwing away many more hands than you will be playing. Waiting for the right hands to play will teach you patience. If you can discipline yourself to do this, you will develop a strong basic foundation that will improve your game. Let's take a look at the suggested hand selection to achieve this goal.

The suggested hands to play are the 20 strong hands that can be played from early position along with a few additional hands added in late position. Although these are early position hands they are spread out into the middle and late positions.

Early Position
Raise with A-A, K-K, and A-Ks from any position.
Call with A-K, A-Qs, K-Qs, and Q-Q and fold everything else.

Middle Position
Call with J-J, T-T, 9-9, 8-8, A-Js, A-Ts, Q-Js, A-Q, K-Q. Late Position
Call with A-Xs, K-Ts, Q-Ts, J-Ts, A-J, A-T (note x denotes any card).

Play any pair and suited connectors if there are more than five players. If you play small pairs you must fold if you don't flop a set. Fold if the pot is raised.

I played only these recommended hands for the first 50 hours of play when I was learning the game. Limiting my play to these hands allowed me to concentrate on other fundamentals of the game. I used the time when I was not active in a hand to observe other players and practice reading the board. I found this was an excellent opportunity to observe what hands my opponents were playing. By the end of my session I could tell you what type of hands each player was entering the pot with. Knowing the standards of your opponents will tell you a lot if they later raise or call a bet.

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