Bad Poker Starting Hands
Posted By admin On 13/04/22And I have never written an article about it before because I think this just legitimizes what to me seems like a pretty ridiculous question.
If you stuck with the full-ring starting hand table, you would be playing too few hands and missing out on good opportunities to make money. Short handed tables are going to be harder to play than the full ring tables because the action is generally going to be wilder and less predictable. It depends on the number of players, betting structure, position, and skill of the respective players. Ignoring betting structure and skill. For full ring it is 72o (The o stands for offsuit, meaning the cards are of different suits from each o.
But here is the quick answer.PokerStars is not rigged. It just appears that way sometimes due to the incredible speed of online poker. Because online poker sites like PokerStars typically deal hands 3 times faster than a live poker game, you should expect 3 times as many bad beats. This is even more pronounced in Zoom Poker which can deal hands up to 10 times as fast as a live poker game.
Is PokerStars Legit? Is it Rigged?
But believe me I get it, some people are still not convinced that PokerStars is legit and not rigged.
And I know that the emails and the comments I get about online poker being rigged won't stop. Therefore, hopefully this article will help solve the Great Debate once and for all!
Is online poker rigged? Are we being invaded by Russian bots? Are there mysterious ninjas hired to create another rigged river card just for you right before the final table?
I gotta be honest. I can't possibly answer all of these earth shattering questions in a tiny little blog post like this.
However, a little bit of common sense should tell us that of course there is some nefarious behaviour going on when anything important (such as money) is on the line.
Humans rig the stock market, they rig elections, they lie on their resumes and they cheat on their high school exams as well. Heck a decent chunk of them even end up cheating on the person that they swore their wedding vows to!
So in short, yes of course there are certain poker sites and individuals out there who are trying to rig the system in their favor when it comes to online poker. You would have to be incredibly naive not to realize this.
But is PokerStars legit? Is there widespread cheating going on across the entire industry, and specifically at the biggest online poker site in the world, PokerStars?
Probably not. Here are 5 reasons why.
1. PokerStars is a Money Making Machine
The first and most highly obvious reason why PokerStars is probably not rigged is because they are an absolute money making machine.
As I have said many times before on this blog the house is always by far the biggest winner in poker. And PokerStars takes this to an entirely new level.
They are estimated to be bringing in 500 million dollars in pure profit each year. And therefore god only knows how much they were hauling in 5-10 years ago when poker was really booming.And I personally have made a lot of money on PokerStars as well over the years simply by playing against guys like this!
So common sense should once again beg the question: Why on earth would you possibly want to screw that up?
When you are already making absurd amounts of money and dominating the entire industry what possible incentive could you have to want to rig something?
PokerStars is one of the most successful and profitable brands the industry has ever seen. And no matter what you think of their new ownership, they continue to crush it in every possible way from a business point of view.
So there is simply no plausible motive here.
In fact they have every reason in the world NOT to rig it and just keep playing a winning hand over and over again.
2. You Can Simply Go Check it For Yourself
The second most important reason why PokerStars is probably not rigged is kind of a biggie as well. And that is that you can actually just go and check it for yourself!
PokerStars is one of the few poker sites out there who are very open about what they do. They will in fact actually send you every single hand history that you have ever played on their site.
I know this because I did it myself once. I requested close to 8 million hands that I had played on PokerStars from them. Within 24 hours I had the links to download them all.
This means that I could then go stick those 8 million hands in a tracking program like PokerTracker and run extensive analysis and tests looking for statistical anomalies.
This is one of the biggest reasons why I am not a big fan of a recent trend in online poker towards anonymous poker sites and/or those who do not provide hand histories.
'Open source' poker sites like PokerStars are much better for the industry in my opinion because they allow us to essentially police the games for ourselves.
Any legit online poker site like PokerStars is not going to hide anything from you. All the hand histories are available for you to see for yourself.
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3. There is No Actual Evidence that PokerStars is Rigged
So given the fact that we can actually run our own tests and search for statical anomalies over massive sample sizes you would think that all the people who are so certain that PokerStars is rigged would have overwhelming evidence to support their claims.
Nope, nada, none.
There has never been one conclusive study that I have ever seen, based on a statistically relevant sample size, which actually proves that there is any rigging going on at PokerStars.
Their standard arguments instead usually go something like this:
'OMG...My AA got cracked 3 times in a row by some stupid fish!!!...I told you JOKERSTARS is rigged, rigged rigged!!!'
The main problem with these 'arguments' is that they fail to account for even the most basic variance in poker and they are completely lacking in a statistically significant sample size.
A sample size of 3 hands is completely meaningless in poker. And so is a sample size of 300 hands, 3,000 hands or even 30,000 hands.
This is why most advanced poker training programs these days focus exclusively on long term results based on solid decision making at the poker tables in the short run.
To put it quite simply, you need to be working with millions and millions of hands in order to get to the point where you can mathematically rule out variance.
Anyone who has actually played this many hands of poker knows exactly what I mean by this.
I have never seen a real legit study based on this many hands which conclusively proves that there are widespread statistical anomalies going on with the RNG on PokerStars.
Because if such a study like this actually did exist, believe me you would have heard about it by now. And it would be an absolute bombshell within the poker industry.
4. Human Bias and Defence Mechanism
The next reason why some people are convinced that online poker is rigged is because most people lose at this game. And that unfortunate little reality isn't likely to change any time soon.
Once the poker sites and the winning poker players take their cut there just isn't much left over for everybody else. In fact I would estimate (conservatively) that 70% of poker players lose over the long run.
And the other thing that we know about poker players is that virtually all of them think they are pretty good, or at least above average. Poker is kind of like driving, nobody will ever admit they are bad at it.
So this naturally leads to a situation where many losing poker players will look to either repress this reality or simply shift the blame to something else for their lack of success.
In fact, Sigmund Freud (the father of modern psychology), even created a name for this very common unconscious process. He called it a defence mechanism.
When you aren't winning at poker the easy solution is just to blame it all on your bad luck or convince yourself that the whole game is rigged against you.
This is an absolutely crucial reason why poker continues to be so profitable.
Losing poker players have an easy out. They can just continually convince themselves that their lack of success is due to some outside force beyond their control.
And therefore, they never even think to address the real reason why they keep losing, which is their own lack of skill and lack of tilt control among other things.
There is no other game on earth that I have ever seen that inspires such incredible levels of self delusion. And quite frankly, it is an absolutely beautiful thing.
5. Variance and the Speed of Online Poker
The final reason why some people swear that online poker is rigged is because they don't realize how the speed of the online game changes everything.
Daniel Negreanu actually touches on this specifically in his new poker strategy course.
A lot of the people who claim that online poker is rigged come from a live poker background. Or they have played a statistically insignificant amount of hands online (less than 100k).
Therefore, they simply do not understand that the speed of online dealing (often 3 times as fast as a live game), coupled with the ability to multi-table, means that bad beats and coolers are simply bound to happen far more often than what they are used to.
This doesn't mean that anything is actually rigged. It just means that you are now experiencing the acceleration of a Ferrari instead of your old Toyota.
Yes it is going to feel weird at first. It won't even seem believable at times in fact. This is why many people do not feel that PokerStars is legit.
And if you try your hand at something like Zoom Poker (which deals hands upwards of 10 times as fast as a live poker game), it might just blow your mind completely!
You really have to understand that online poker is a completely different experience from live poker. Yes it is the same game with the same rules, but all of the similarities end there.
The speed at which the online version of the game is dealt means that you are going to get to the long run far quicker than you are used to. This also means that you will see the true depths of statistical variance much more vividly.
And when you add in the ability to multi-table into the mix as well, you better buckle up. Because it is going to be downright crazy and quite simply not believable at times.
By the way if your are curious how I am able to play 20+ tables of online poker and still keep track of all my opponents, yes I do use several poker software tools and aids.
For the complete list of all the poker software and tools that I use as a pro, click here.
Should You Use the New PokerStars All-In Cashout Feature?
I do also want to mention that PokerStars recently added an All-in Cash Out feature that people ask me about now all the time.
Basically, this feature allows you to 'cashout' your equity in the hand when all the money goes into the middle, instead of just letting the cards fall as they may (and potentially taking a bad beat).
As far as I know the Pokerstars all-in cashout feature is only available at the lowest stakes (NL2, NL5 and NL10) and only on regular tables (i.e. not Zoom).
Now do I personally use this feature? No.
I honestly think it is pretty silly. However, I do think it is a very smart 'gimmick' feature by PokerStars though.
Because now all the people who write them angry emails every day claiming it's all rigged against them can just 'cashout' their equity and avoid taking a dreaded bad beat.
For me though, this isn't poker and this isn't how winning players think about the game in my experience. I don't play poker for the results of individual hands or day to day results.
I instead play poker for the long term (months and years) and focus on my results over hundreds of thousands of hands. This is how I have been able to create a career out of this game.
Therefore, since I know that my equity is going to be realized over the long term, I can stop focusing on short term results, like so many amateurs do, and just focus instead on consistently making good poker decisions.
However, for all those people who take it very personally every time they receive a bad beat in poker, this new All-in Cashout feature might be an option for you to consider when playing on PokerStars.
How I Became the Biggest Winner of All-Time on PokerStars (Micro Stakes)
The debate about online poker being rigged or not will rage on no matter what I say here.
And I know a few people will probably even accuse me of being a 'shill' for PokerStars after writing this article.
The most hilarious part about that is anyone who actually reads my poker blog regularly knows that I have been actively recommending that you DO NOT play at PokerStars for many, many years now!
And that is not because I think there is any rigging going on at PokerStars or that PokerStars is not legit.
It is simply because there are many far easier online poker sites (softer games) available these days to play at in my opinion.
But hopefully some of the points discussed in this article will help bring some sanity back to the discussion. Obviously online poker faces many challenges and the integrity of the games will always be questioned as well.
Humans like to cheat at stuff after all. The sky is blue as well!
But the idea that there is any widespread rigging going on at PokerStars in particular is pretty absurd in my opinion.
I have made a lot of money on PokerStars over the years as a 10+ year poker pro by simply using a solid fundamental tight and aggressive strategy and focusing heavily on my tilt control.
This is in fact why I originally wrote what is now the best selling poker strategy book of all-time for low stakes PokerStars games, Crushing the Microstakes.
And then I also included hours and hours of optional videos with the book of me personally playing Zoom, 6max and full ring on PokerStars.
I have made tens of thousands of dollars in these low stakes games (some of the highest in PokerStars history), and I wanted to show people exactly how I did it with a video series.
I also wanted to prove once and for all that you can absolutely crush these games when you use the right poker strategy and focus on your tilt control.
However, I can't lie.
After playing millions and millions of hands on PokerStars, I have also taken an enormous amount of bad beats over the years. So much so, that it seemed completely unbelievable at times.
And there have been many times when I felt like just giving up completely. Throwing in the towel and quitting.
But I realized that this is the time when you find out what you are really made of as a poker player. When you can't win a hand to save your life for weeks or even months on end.
This is when you separate yourself from all the other amateurs out there. This is when you get to prove that you are a professional.
And this really is the critical point.
Winning at poker over the long run is really hard. It takes an unbelievable amount of work ethic, discipline, self control and patience.
And as a 10+ year poker pro I can tell you that the vast majority of people who play this game are simply not willing to put in this level of dedication and work.
After all, it is so much easier to shift the blame onto somebody or something else than to actually put in the hard work every single day both at the poker tables and away from them improving your game.
Look guys, if being a big winner in poker was easy, then everybody would be doing it. The bottom line is that you will get exactly what you put into this game.
You can keep choosing to believe that it is all rigged against you like most people do, or you can choose to finally address the real root causes for your lack of success in poker.
Having coached 100+ people myself to finally start winning big on PokerStars, I can tell you that the #1 reason most people don't win is because they are bad at poker.
I found that many people *think* they are good at poker, but in reality they do not really understand how to play a fundamentally sound tight and aggressive poker strategy.
They also typically suffer from an appalling lack of discipline and tilt control in most cases, both of which are absolutely vital components of any winning poker strategy.To put it bluntly, it is only when you finally decide to start approaching this game like a professional that you will start creating the real consistent profits you have always dreamed about on Pokerstars.
In any case, I wish you all the best at the poker tables in 2020 no matter what your poker goals are. Thank you for reading.
Lastly, if you want to know the strategy I use to consistently make $1000+ per month on PokerStars as a 10+ year poker pro, make sure you grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.
Hopefully you’ve already absorbed a wealth of knowledge from our poker lessons. There’s still much to learn – in fact you’ll never stop learning about poker. Before moving onto the next stage of your poker development let’s review some of the typical mistakes that beginners make when playing Texas hold’em.
Although one or two of the mistakes we’re going to mention are relevant to no-limit hold’em, the majority are applicable to all forms of hold’em, in addition to other poker formats. Please use this lesson as a guide, so that you don’t fall into the same traps.
The Top 10 Typical Beginner Mistakes
In no particular order, here are our top ten typical beginner mistakes:
#1 – Playing Too Many Hands
One of the main mistakes new players make is feeling like they have to play every hand. They may become impatient, feel left out of the action or don’t want to look weak in front of their friends. It could also be that they just don’t know any better. Any Jack, Queen, King or Ace looks good if you don’t understand good starting hand selection.
The problem with playing too many hands is that you are actually only going to hit the flop a small percentage of the time and even if you do hit the flop; it’s hard to know if your hand is the best. Until you understand how to play beyond the cards, you will mostly be playing based on what you are dealt and if you are involved in too many pots, the next thing you know all of your chips will be gone.
#2 – Playing Scared
While some beginners play with reckless abandon, many play with fear. Having not played many hands, new poker players are often afraid to make a mistake or they simply are afraid to lose. Because of this they will fold until they know they have an unbeatable hand. Fear can also manifest itself into paranoia, where a player assumes that anyone betting aggressively must have a monster hand (often referred to as “monsters under the bed”) and they will fold all but the best possible hands. The only way to get over this is to log in time at the poker tables and practice trusting your instincts.
#3 – Getting Committed to a Hand
Because of the competitive nature of poker, beginners think that poker is like other sports where “giving up” is considered a bad thing. While you shouldn’t play passively, poker is not like other sports and it is often the correct play to fold. When you first start playing poker, it’s easy to get emotionally attached to a hand. This might be a pre-flop hand like a pocket pair or making a pair on the flop. You stay in a hand because you don’t want to get bluffed out of a pot or look weak – or because the competitor in you says there is no way to win if you fold. Unfortunately, by continuously calling bets you never really know where you stand in the hand until it’s too late.
Poker Starting Hands Chart
#4 – Improper Bet Sizes
This one is primarily related to no limit and pot limit games. Understanding how to correctly size your bets in these games to manipulate the action comes with experience of playing poker. However, such common betting mistakes that beginners tend to make are easy to fix. New players often raise or bet at the extremes – meaning too little or too much. Some common examples of this are raising the minimum pre-flop in no limit games when there are several players who have already entered the pot or raising 5x-6x the size of the blinds when you are first to enter a hand.
Miss-sizing of bets also occurs after the flop. Beginners will bet the minimum with big hands (two pair or a set) when there are lots of players in the hand allowing them to draw cheaply to a better hand. Conversely, they may also over bet to “protect” their hand. In most cases, these are both incorrect. Ideally, in poker you want to bet an amount that maximizes how much you can win and minimizes how much you can lose.
Poker Starting Hands Odds Calculator
#5 – Chasing
Similar to #3, a beginner will often stay in a hand hoping other cards will appear that could improve their hand. This could include straight and flush draws, but also calling bets in order to pair an Ace or a second card for two pair. Calling on a draw isn’t necessarily a wrong, but the mistake that beginners often make is chase getting improper pot odds to do so. While you might hit the card(s) you need in one particular hand, if you are chasing without the right odds you will lose money in the long run.
#6 – Overvaluing Marginal Hands
A very common mistake among beginners is playing hands that look good on the surface, but in reality hold little value or are easily dominated by other hands. In hold’em, examples include suited cards or face cards with bad kickers (K3, Q5, etc.). Additionally, this includes high hand combinations like QT, KJ or A9. While these hands are not unplayable, knowing how to play them comes with experience. The challenge with these face cards is that there aren’t many flops that you can be confident that you have the best hand. Even if you do make a pair, you can easily be out-kicked or beaten by a higher pocket pair.
#7 – Letting Emotions Affect Your Play
Whether it is from a bad day at work or a bad beat at the table, emotions can affect how you make decisions. This can result in unprofitable poker actions like chasing losses, making desperate moves or allowing your ego to take over. Beginners will often make rash, emotional decisions that can act like blinders, preventing them from taking in all the information they need to make a smart decision. Stuff happens. So if you feel like you are starting to make emotional decisions in a poker game, just take a step back and reset your mind.
#8 – Playing Out of Position
There are many other factors that weigh into a poker decision beyond just the cards. Your position in relation to the order in which the action occur is one of them. Being able to act last in a hand allows you to see how everyone else is going to act before making your decision. This is a very powerful concept. The mistake beginner poker players make is entering a pot or calling a raise out of position without a plan. They get lost in the hand because they don’t have enough information about where they stand.
#9 – Bluffing Too Much
Some players who are new to the game think poker is all about bluffing. While it is satisfying to bluff someone out of a pot, you should develop an optimal percentage of bluffing in order to not become predictable. For a bluff to work, your opponents need to think you have a real poker hand. If you are always bluffing, your bluffs will not be believable and people will start to look you up. Another component to bluffing is that your bets need to tell a believable story and you should be representing a particular hand instead of just random aggression.
#10 – Playing Above Your Bankroll
Even if you are only playing poker recreationally, it is still important to manage a poker bankroll. Most beginners do not understand the role that variance plays in poker. You can be playing great, but still go through a long losing streak. If you don’t manage your poker money properly and play within your limits, you will burn through your money. Even if you develop the skills to play at a higher level, if you don’t have the bankroll to withstand the inevitable variance that comes with poker, you will go broke.
Mistakes Are an Opportunity to Learn
Mistakes at the poker table can prove costly but as a beginner you should see them as an opportunity to learn. Don’t worry if you’re guilty of making any of the mistakes listed in this lesson. Everyone who plays poker makes mistakes all the time. Skilled poker players just make fewer mistakes. Hopefully now you know what needs improving and what parts of your game you should consider working on.
Related Lessons
By Donovan Panone
Donovan started playing poker in 2004 and is an experienced tournament and cash game player who has a passion for teaching and helping others improve their game.