Starting Hands, Pre-Flop Game

For the beginner, the most important rule is to strictly go by the Starting Hands List. It is absolutely necessary put it next to your computer so you can check it and act accordingly when evaluating your pre-flop hand! After a while, you will know the list more or less by heart and will not need it anymore.
To understand the list, you have to know the card symbols, know that AQs means Ace Queen suited, JTo means Jack Ten offsuit.
Cap means you raise to the maximum even when you get raises and reraises from your opponents.
Calling two bets after someone raised is “cold calling”.  Very important: If somone raises before you act, play only with the so-called “premium hands” AA, KK, QQ, AKs, AQs, AJs, AKo!

The starting hands list decides your pre-flop action for you on the basis of the probability of your hand developping to be the winning hand and the expectation of the potential size of the pot. All hands that are not listed here are trash and must be folded!
It is a mathematical fact, that when you play 100 rounds at a table, you get a playable hand only about 20 times. That means, you call only with app. 20% of your hands. If you play more, you will definitely loose money.
Calling with a hand like J9o may win you a pot every once in a while, but in the long run you will loose money.

There are 3 reasons for this:

The reasons why certain hands are being raised pre-flop is that they either have a high probability to be the best hand after the flop even when the flop misses them (high pairs like AA, KK, QQ) or that they have more than one chance to develop to the strongest hand (like AKs: double chance to make top pair/top kicker, flush and straight possibilities) or in their high-card strenght (AKo, AQo).

The importance of position for the strenght of your hand cannot be emphasized high enough: a hand like Q9s which you can call with on the button, must be folded in early position!

Make a printout of this list and use it while playing!