Poker Essays

Taken from The Complete Book of Hold'em Poker by Gary Carson.

For the first time player I recommend a much simpler approach to the play of the first two cards then I've outlined in this chapter. Basically it's to play only hands with two big cards, that add up to 21 if evaluated as blackjack hands. You can include large pairs in that. The basic hands would be an Ace with any face card or 10 and any pair of 10s or better.

Considering all the combinations of your cards, your position, and your opponents will eventually become second nature, but to the beginner it can be overwhelming. Limiting your play to just hands that contain an ace and either a ten or a face card greatly simplifies the things you have to think of.

There are some flaws in using blackjack hands as a hand selection rule, but the flaws aren't major. You won't be playing many hands using this rule and that gives you plenty of opportunity to make observations about the game during you first hour or two of play. At that point you can use the information that you've gathered about the game and the suggestions in the tables to make modifications in your hand selection.

Once you've gotten just a little experience you can make some modification to this simple approach.

From early position you should probably eliminate the weakest of the "21" hands, folding an Ace with a Ten or Jack. You can play those two hands from middle position if no one has called.

From middle or late position you should expand the hands to include those that give you a blackjack count of 20 -- any two ten-valued cards or an ace and a nine.

Take it a step at a time. Don't try to do it all at once.