How to Avoid Specific Poker Hands You Shouldn’t Be Playing and Fold Hands You Should

The first step is to realize that you are attaching significance to a symbolic item and that is clouding your rational judgment. The next step is to learn to manage both the significance and your attachment to these particular hands. Please remember a great hand, or a horrible hand, or your favorite hand are all statements of significance that compromise technique. We need to understand that the whole idea of “favorite hands” is not going to work for us in the long term.

Remember, the value of any hand is based on your situation. As my friend T.J, Cloutier said, “Sometimes jacks are gold, other times they’re toilet paper.” Your job as a professional is to know the difference.

Almost any hand has a right time and a horrible time to play it. K♦-J♣ might be good to play from middle position early in a tournament when stack depths are deep and it’s a tight passive table. In a solid cash game, I wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole in early position or even middle position. It’s not the hand that’s the problem, it’s a hand coupled with a situation.

Remember guys, a hand is not “good” or “bad”. Given the right situation, any hand can be playable. I don’t care how bad it is: 8♣-5♥ even has value in the right situation. To make profitable decisions, you have to know both the pot odds you’re being offered, and the equity of your hand.