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You don’t have to play Texas holdem for long before you start doing a little reading about the game.

Texas Hold'em is always a game you should play with the long term in mind, if your poker hand has a 55/45 advantage compared to your opponents, you can lose it 10 times in a row. But if you play the hand 10,000 times on average you will win 55% (5.500) times.This is. Are You Practicing Good Hand Selection? Before you can determine whether or not to fold a hand. How and when to fold properly in Texas Hold’em. Published by: Bob Posted on. Folding can be as much a part of a winning strategy as playing a hand through fifth street. Playing poker is all about the excitement of taking a hand to the last street and get ahold of that major pot. However, that doesn’t happen that often, and the.

One of the first things you’ll learn is that you need to have starting hand requirements.

You can find various charts and tables for this sort of thing, but you’ll also learn quickly that you have 169 possible starting hands.

• The only time it is right to fold AA is when you are in a satellite tournament. Let say 101 people left and 100 qualify. You have a solid stack and know that if you don't play at all you will 100% qualify while if you call someone's all in you can lose. Calling in this situation is a.
• Remember, poker is a battle royale. When you prepare to don your battle armor, be.

The best of these is pocket aces, and the worst is 27 offsuit.

But how do you rank the starting hands in-between?

You’ll find plenty of quality and insightful advice regarding Texas Holdem when searching online, but here’s some information presented in a way that it should be easy to absorb and remember from the professionals.

How to Play Pocket Pairs Preflop

One of the first books I read about Texas holdem was co-written by Phil Hellmuth, and it was titled Play Poker Like the Pros.

He has a top 10 starting hands list that consists of any pair of 7s or higher, along with ace-king and ace-queen.

He suggests that if you’re new to the game, you play super-tight and limit yourself to these hands.

So, obviously, pocket pairs are important pre-flop in Texas holdem.

But how do you play them?

You start by subcategorizing these hands:

• Huge pairs – aces or kings
• Big pairs – any pair of 10s, jacks, or queens
• Medium pairs – any pair of 7s, 8s, or 9s
• Little pairs – all the rest – any pair of 6 or lower

How to Play Huge Pairs Preflop

It’s hard to lose money when you have a pair of kings or a pair of aces pre-flop in Texas holdem. These hands can often win unimproved. It doesn’t matter what kind of game you’re in – passive or aggressive, loose or tight, huge pairs practically play themselves.

These hands are easy to play pre-flop, especially when playing Texas Holdem online.

Bet with them, raise with them and re-raise with them.

Here are the huge pairs in list format:

• AA
• KK

How to Play Big Pairs Preflop

Big pairs are still great hands, but not as great as aces or kings, obviously.

But like the huge pairs, you can often win just on the strength of this pair alone. And a big pair plays well in any kind of game, too.

The only time you wouldn’t re-raise with a big pair like this is if you’re acting after multiple raisers and re-raisers. In that case, you should consider the possibility that your opponent is ahead.

The correct play here gets trickier. It might make sense to call a raise and a re-raise here if you know the other players’ tendencies and see what happens on the flop. If you’re against a tight player, it might make sense to just fold in the race of multiple raises.

Here are the big pairs in list format:

• QQ
• JJ
• TT

How to Play Medium Pairs Preflop

If you can reduce your competition to just a couple of people, these pairs play well – but mostly if those players are loose and probably have weaker hands than you do.

If you can get into a pot with 5+ other players, you have an opportunity to win big on the occasions when you flop a set. With 5 players in the pot with you, someone almost always has a pair, and they’ll usually play it aggressively.

Limping from early position is appropriate, and raising from late position is also appropriate, but only if you’re trying to thin the competition. If multiple players have already limped, you should limp to so that you can get more people in the pot.

This hand is strong enough that you can afford to call a single raiser and try to hit a set on the flop, but you need to be ready to fold if you don’t – especially against tough opponents.

Here are the medium pairs in list format:

• 99
• 88
• 77

How to Play Small Pairs Preflop

It’s hard to win a hand with a small pair unless it improves on the flop, turn, or river. The profits from this category of hand come from the occasional sets and full houses.

Your goal should be to get into the hand as cheaply as possible and with as many opponents as possible.

If the game is loose enough, you’d be justified calling a raise pre-flop, although multiple raisers and re-raisers are trouble. Position matters a lot when playing in person or at online casinos.

Some players are going to put a lot of money into the pot regardless of what happens on the later rounds, so even if you can’t get into the pot with 5+ players, these are playable hands.

Just don’t overplay small pairs. And be ready to let go of them when you miss the flop.

Here’s a list of the small pairs:

• 66
• 55
• 44
• 33
• 22

How to Play Suited Cards Preflop

Suited cards are cards of the same suit. They can be great hands, mediocre hands, or lousy hands, depending on the ranks of the suited cards.

How to Play Suited Broadway Cards

The strongest suited cards are the broadway cards. These include the ace with a king, queen, jack, or ten. This category also includes king-queen suited and king-jack suited.

You can win multiple ways with this category of starting hands. The most common way you’ll win with these cards is when you hit a big pair with a strong kicker. You can also often hit a flush with a big card.

Instead of automatically raising with these cards as you would with the big pairs, though, you should usually only raise if you’re the first one in the pot. If you have raisers in front of you, let your opponent’s tendencies guide your decision. Against a loose player, call. Against a tight player, at least consider folding.

Even though these are strong hands, they’re still drawing hands. You won’t often win unless your hand improves on the flop, turn, or river.

Here’s a list of the top suited broadway cards:

• AKs
• AQs
• AJs
• A10s
• KQs
• KJs

But not all suited broadway cards are premium starting hands like the big ones listed above.

Queen-jack suited, king-ten suited, queen-ten suited, and jack-ten suited are also broadway cards, but they’re considerably weaker. They’re harder to win with because it’s easier for your opponent to have a stronger hand.

Your goal is to win against weak opponents or to hit a really big hand and win a large pot with a lot of opponents. You’ll win those pots when you hit your occasional straights and flushes.

These are good hands to limp in with, and you can raise with them in late position if everyone in front of you limped.

These are good hands to limp in with when playing at real money online casinos, and you can raise with them in late position if everyone in front of you limped.

If someone raises, though, make sure you can get multiple players into the pot with you before calling. It won’t usually be profitable to get heads-up with a small suited broadway hand.

Here’s a list of the smaller suited broadway starting hands:

• QJs
• K10s
• Q10s
• J10s

Big-Little Suited

Big-little suited hands are any suited ace with a 9 or lower or any suited king with a 9 or lower.

The bigger the kicker is, the better. The aces are far stronger than the kings, too.

But even if you pair the king, you have a lot to fear when an ace shows up on one of the later rounds.

Your goal with a big-little suited hand, though, is to get into a pot with a lot of other players cheap and hit a flush.

Here’s a list of big-little suited hands:

• A9s
• A8s
• A7s
• A6s
• A5s
• A4s
• A3s
• A2s
• K9s
• K8s
• K7s
• K6s
• K5s
• K4s
• K3s
• K2s

Suited Connectors

These are hands starting with 10-9 suited and going down from there, with or without gaps.

Suited connectors without gaps, for example, are 10-9 suited, 9-8 suited, 8-7 suited, 6-5 suited, and 5-4 suited.

Here’s a list of playable suited connectors without gaps:

• 10-9s
• 98s
• 87s
• 76s
• 54s

(You’ll notice that 32s isn’t playable.)

Suited connectors with one gap, on the other hand, are jack-9 suited, 10-8 suited, 9-7 suited, and so on, down to 6-4 suited.

Here’s a list of playable suited connectors with one gap:

• J9s
• 10-8s
• 97s
• 86s
• 75s
• 64s

(Notice that 53s isn’t playable.)

You can also have suited connectors with 2 or 3 gaps like queen-9 suited or 9-6 suited (or in between), or queen-8 suited, and jack-7 suited.

The list of playable suited connectors with 2 gaps is shorter:

• Q9s
• J8s
• 10-7s
• 96s

And the list of playable suited connectors with 3 gaps is even shorter still:

• Q8s
• J7s

Regardless of which suited connector you’re looking at, it’s a hand that needs to hit hard on the flop to bet worth continuing with. In other words, you want to get in before the flop for a minimal investment and with multiple opponents.

Otherwise, suited connectors aren’t really worth playing pre-flop.

Also, you’ll notice that this category doesn’t include suited broadway cards, as they’re played a little differently.

Unsuited Cards Before the Flop

The only time you’ll play unsuited cards pre-flop is if they’re both broadway cards.

These hands play the same as the other speculative hands. Get in cheap with a lot of other players so you can win a big pot. Be ready to fold them.

Here’s a list of playable unsuited cards:

• AK
• AQ
• AJ
• A-10
• KQ
• KJ
• K-10
• QJ
• Q-10
• J-10

Unplayable Starting Hands

If you’re running a naked bluff – which I don’t recommend to beginners, anyway – any 2 cards might do. If you notice how many starting hands are included in the lists above, you’ll see that you have 66 playable hands in these admittedly somewhat arbitrary categories.

You have 169 possible starting hands in Texas holdem, which means that I’m recommending you only play the top 39% of the possible starting hands.

But this doesn’t mean you should always play any of these hands.

When you account for the folding you’ll do when you have less than a premium holding, you’ll more likely play between 15% and 25% of your starting hands, depending on table conditions.

Where to Get More Guidance About Starting Hand Categories

I leaned heavily on Ed Miller’s book, Small Stakes Holdem when writing this post.

But you’ll also find Phil Hellmuth’s book, Play Poker Like the Pros helpful – especially when it comes to starting hands for no limit players.

Doyle Brunson’s Super/System also has excellent insights into how to play various starting hands in no limit holdem.

Holdem Poker for Advanced Players, by Mason Malmuth and David Sklansky, has a grouping of starting hands by category that might also prove useful.

Finally, check out this blog on preflop Texas Holdem Poker strategy.

Conclusion

The easiest way to get started playing well in Texas holdem is to put your starting hands into categories. Most new players play too many hands pre-flop, and they don’t fold often enough when their hands miss the flop.

You’ll know better than to make those mistakes now.

But starting hands are just the start of Texas holdem wisdom.

Last week, a federal judge in Brooklyn overturned the indictment of a Staten Island man who ran poker games in the back room of a warehouse, on the grounds that poker is a game of skill, not chance -- and hence, such games cannot be prosecuted under federal laws prohibiting illegal gambling businesses.

It's just the latest sally in the ongoing debate over poker that's been raging for more than 150 years. And it comes on the heels of a ruling last year by the Justice Department that 1962's Wire Act applied only to sports betting, not poker. This is kind of ironic, since the Justice Department also shut down online poker in the spring of 2011, charging the men behind the three most popular online sites with fraud and money laundering.

Clearly, the issue is far from resolved, but John Pappas, executive director of the Poker Player's Alliance, is encouraged by the latest ruling by Judge Jack B. Weinstein. 'Today's federal court ruling is a major victory for the game of poker and the millions of Americans who enjoy playing it,' he said in a statement. (The alliance is dedicated to decriminalizing poker.)

But wait! Via @Chemjobber on Twitter, I learned of a spanking new study by German researchers concluding that winning at poker is basically all about luck. They recruited 300 poker players, half self-defined 'experts' and half 'average,' sat them down at tables of six, evenly divided between expert and average players, and then had them all play 60 hands of Texas Hold 'Em. Oh, and they fixed the deals, the better to measure the effects of luck.

Their conclusion, per Neuroskeptic: 'Luck, rather than skill, was key in determining final balance, with experts taking no more, on average, than novices. Experts did play differently, on various measures, and seemed better able to cope with bad luck, losing less; but they also won less when given good cards.'

So are the German researchers correct that poker should thus be classified as gambling? Not necessarily. A 2008 study concluded that poker is a skill -- students who received some basic pointers performed better while playing 1000 hands of poker than those who received no training at all. Still other studies support the German conclusion. Who are we to believe?

Neuroskeptic rightly points out a major flaw in the 2012 study, namely, the classification of 'expert' players was based on self-reports. I would argue further that playing a mere 60 or 1000 hands of poker is an insufficient sample size, given the statistical complexities of the game. There are 52 cards, with more than 2.5 million possible five-card combinations. Texas Hold 'Em uses seven cards so there are around 133 million combinations. Plus, you know, fixing the deals really messes with those probabilities.

Compare this to the sample size of the expert witness cited by Judge Weinstein in his massive 120-page ruling. Randal D. Heeb is an economist and statistician (and avid poker player) who analyzed 415 million hands online of no-limit Texas Hold 'Em and found that the skill of a player 'had a statistically significant effect on the amount of money won or lost.'

The many mathematicians and physicists who are aficionados of poker would agree with Heeb. I wrote a feature for Discoverin November 2010 on poker-playing physicists, which included the Time Lord (a.k.a. Caltech physicist Sean Carroll, a.k.a. my Better Half), as well as string theorist Jeff Harvey, particle physicists Michael Binger and Marcel Vonk (both of whom have done extremely well on the professional circuit), and a former grad student of Harvey's named Eduard Antonyan. It spawned an NPR piece for good measure. And I gathered all the material cut from the article into a massive blog post, which dealt explicitly with this question of whether poker is a game of chance or skill.

If poker is a game of chance, and hence gambling, why do physicists love it so much? Physicists hate to gamble. 'I don't like gambling at all,' Antonyan told me. 'I don't enjoy it and there's nothing in it for me to compensate for the clear negative EV decision of gambling.'

Harvey's not a fan, either: 'Personally I don't like to gamble on games where the house has the odds, but I'm not critical of people who do.' And while the Time Lord gamely learned craps with me while I was writing The Calculus Diaries (it was research, people!), he hasn't been tempted to play craps since.

Binger doesn't mind gambling, per se, but he learned the pitfalls of blackjack as an undergraduate, when he wrote a computer program to beat the game through card-counting (or, as the casinos like to call it, “cheating”) for his senior project. Then he tried to put his strategy into practice. He lost a pile of cash playing blackjack on an ill-fated trip to Reno, and was barred from six casinos in one day for card-counting in a desperate attempt to recoup his losses. “I realized I wasn’t going to get rich playing blackjack,” he recalled.

But poker was different: as he studied the game and pondered the underlying mathematics, Binger realized that poker could be a “beatable game.'

Fundamentally, poker is a game of skill and strategy, not a game of pure chance (although luck plays a role). (UPDATE: For clarification, when you play poker in a casino, you are playing against the other players -- not the house. The casino takes a cut of the pot, but in essence, you are renting the table. So casinos make far less money off of poker than they do off their usual pure games of chance. They make some -- that's their business model -- but if poker weren't so enormously popular, casinos might not host the games at all.)

Vonk has always loved games, but his love for poker rests on the combination of 'math skills' and 'people skills,' as he put it. 'Good poker requires that you make sound game-theoretic decisions but there is still plenty of freedom to try and outsmart your opponents,' he said. 'Other casino games miss that second element. All you can do in blackjack or roulette is make the best possible mathematical decisions, and even then, you will still lose in the long run. I have never been attracted to those games. It's the fact that you play against other people that makes poker so interesting, and that makes it possible to actually be a winner at the game.'

Math skills help, but that's not all it takes to be a poker badass. Binger said the probability and equity calculations and statistical analysis he applies give him an edge in the game. Vonk finds that his post-game analysis of how he played specific hands benefits from his mathematical skills.

But both Vonk and Binger admit that there are also plenty of other players who really don't know much about the underlying math; they have a good feel, or instinct, for how to play the game.

'There are many people who hate math but are great poker players, but there are hardly any players who lack the people reading abilities and still manage to be good poker players,' said Vonk. 'Mathematical knowledge can to a large extent be replaced by intuition and experience. After a player has played a million hands of poker, even if he does not know the math at all, he will have a decent feeling about when it is profitable to draw to a flush and when it is not.'

That said, knowing the math means you can acquire this kind of knowledge much more quickly, and those skills can give an edge in very rare situations that don't often occur in a poker game. 'To be a great player, you need both!' Vonk insisted. Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson is one of the best players in the world, and definitely relies on math and game theory when he plays (his father is a UCLA mathematician, and the two men have written several papers together):

Antonyan estimated that the game of poker is '90% simple math/general strategy, and 10% understanding the dynamics of the table and/or the attitudes of one or more players towards you as they develop.' The math part rests on basic probability theory, and the probabilities of poker are a bit more complicated because there are many more possible combinations of hands -- plus you're working with incomplete information.

Vonk broke down the process to a few basic questions: What cards do I have? What range of cards do I think my opponent has? Given these, what is the probability I will win the hand after all cards have been dealt? And most important: given that probability, will I make money in the long run when I pay the bet? The best one can do, most of the time, is 'make a very broad guess,' he says. Per the Time Lord (blogging way back in 2004):

'Texas Hold 'Em is so popular because it manages to accurately hit the mark between 'enough information to devise a consistently winning strategy' and 'not enough information to do much more than guess.' The charm in such games is that there is no perfect strategy, in the sense that there is no algorithm guaranteed to win in the long run against any other algorithm. The best poker players are able to use different algorithms against different opponents as the situation warrants.'

To get a sense for how the probabilities can play out, consider the following three possible pairs of hole cards:

Ace-7 unsuited

Pair of sixes

Sean posed this question on Cosmic Variance back in 2006: Which hand is most likely to win if you choose to stay in the pot all the way to the showdown, against other pairs of randomly chosen hole cards? The answer took a whole 'nother blog post to delineate.

Mathematically, it depends on the number of opponents. The probability that you will win goes down as the number of opponents goes up, because there are more ways for you to be beaten. Some hands play well against very few opponents, while others play well against many opponents. It all depends on the circumstances.

Against one opponent, the sixes will win 62.8% of the time, versus 57.3% for Ace-7 and 56.2% for Jack-10 suited. Against four opponents, those odds are reversed: Jack-10 suited will win 27.3% of the time, versus 20.7% for Ace-7 and 17.9% for the pair of sixes.

Why does this happen? “Against only one randomly-chosen pair of hole cards, there is a substantial chance that the sixes won’t need to improve; likewise the ace can often come out on top just by itself, so the Ace-7 is second-best,” Sean explained. “But against four randomly-chosen pairs of hole cards, chances are excellent that someone will improve, and Jack-10 suited has the best chance.”

The probabilistic outcomes change again if we pit these three hands against each other, two at a time. In that case, sixes are slightly more likely to beat Ace-7, and Ace-7 is likely to beat Jack-10 suited, but Jack-10 suited is likely to beat a pair of sixes.

The sixes are the best starting hand all by themselves. For one of the latter two to win, favorable community cards must appear on the flop, turn, or river. The only way for the Ace-7 to beat paired sixes is for either an ace or a seven to turn up -- or, less likely, for just the right combination of four cards to land on the board to make a straight or flush.

Pit those same sixes against Jack-10 suited, and the situation is reversed. In that scenario, there are more ways for Jack-10 suited to improve. The cards are “connectors,” so there are more possible cards that would give low straights (7-8-9) and high straights (Q-K-A), plus the hole cards are suited, making it much easier to make a flush.

So Jack-10 suited will usually beat a pair of sixes. But it won’t usually beat Ace-7 if the ace is of the same suit. For instance, if four more suited cards come up, the Jack-10 suited will have a flush, but the Ace-7 will have a higher flush, and will win the hand.

See? Poker is a very complicated game, even more so once you add in player behavior during the various rounds of betting. If determining the edge and the odds were all it took to succeed at poker, probability theory would suffice, and one could fairly deem it gambling. If it were a purely logical game like chess, it would merely require impressive feats of calculation to determine the winning series of moves.

But poker is a game of limited information, where players must deduce what cards their opponents are likely to have based on their knowledge of the odds and clues from other players’ behavior. There may not be a single answer. As Harvey put it in the Discover article: “Chess is like classical mechanics. Poker is like quantum mechanics. In chess, there is only one right move. In poker, there is a probability distribution of right moves.”

Harvey admitted that one of his classic errors is 'calling when I think I am beat for other reasons (betting patterns, tells),' but he calls anyway because 'the math says I should. At times like that, I need to pay less attention to the math.'

Human beings aren't always predictably rational, particularly when it comes to poker: if you assume your opponent is skilled and rational, and he isn't, your strategy could backfire and fall victim to 'beginner's luck.'

I found this enlightening analysis over at Cardplayer.com, outlining the different between an optimal strategy and an exploitive strategy (Ferguson's favorite) in No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em. (Note the very specific circumstances described throughout: change even one element and it might call for a different strategy.)

'To take maximum advantage of this terrible opponent, you need to employ an exploitive strategy. The optimal strategy would still win you money but against bad players, other strategies might win you more money. ... An optimal strategy is designed to protect you against opponents who play well. But when we can find ways to do better than optimal strategy against certain players, we do it.'

The article also mentions mathematical/computational giant John von Neumann, who with Oskar Morgenstern (an economist) wrote the definitive treatise on game theory and poker in 1944: Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. It offered an intriguing insight into the art of the bluff: you should always bluff with your worst hand, not a mediocre “bubble” hand.

If betting is slow, it might be worth calling, or “limping” into the game, with a mediocre hand, because your chances of winning are pretty good against other mediocre hands (assuming someone isn't 'slow-playing' pocket aces). A bad hand won’t win unless everyone else folds, so an aggressive raise is the best strategy.

Indeed, there are rare cases where game theory dictates you should fold pocket aces before the flop when playing a tournament. In non-tournament play, the goal is not just to win the hand but to make the most money. In a tournament, you want to outlast your opponents to win it all. That might entail intentionally opting not to maximize your monetary gains on one specific hand to remain competitive in the tournament. You sacrifice short-term gain to achieve the long-term goal.

It doesn’t pay to be too consistent, either. I once played poker with a group that included Harvey. I consistently bet when I had a strong hand, checked when I had a “bubble” hand, and folded when I had a bad hand. So when I scored with pocket aces and nothing but rags (low cards of varying suits) after the flop, I pushed all-in, going heads-up with Harvey.

He had pocket Queens, a strong hand -- unless one's opponent holds pocket aces. It’s hard to fold pocket Queens but that’s just what Harvey did. He correctly analyzed his chances, based on my all-too-predictable style of play. I won the hand, but didn’t win much money because Harvey folded before he’d committed many chips to the pot.

The optimal strategy can also depend on what type of poker is being played: your strategies will be different for No-Limit Texas Hold-Em, for a No-Limit tournament, a Limit Texas Hold 'Em 'ring game,' and different again for online poker. 'The only people playing online are serious,' said Harvey. 'They also use software to keep track of their opponents' statistics, which is consistent with the rules of the site, even if it seems a bit like cheating.'

Here's the difference: in a live game, you have to remember/keep track of opponents' style of play yourself, i..e, when they raise and in what position. The online software can analyze thousands of hands being played at the same time, and that larger sample space makes for a more accurate statistical analysis.

'It's much more about modeling, statistical analysis and game theory at that level,' said Harvey. 'I'd have to spend as much time learning and playing poker as I do on physics.' And to date, he's been unwilling to do that, unlike Binger, who left physics after scoring big in the 2006 World Series of Poker. He won $4 million with his third place finish, and more than $2 million since. (You can follow his exploits on Twitter: @mwbinger.)

The mathematicians have had a good run when it comes to analyzing poker, but the Time Lord is (rather cheekily) on record predicting that physicists will prove to be the better poker players in the future. His reasoning? No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em is such a complex system that 'we cannot derive a dominant strategy in a closed form.'

'Game theorists and mathematicians study simplified systems about which they can actually prove theorems,' he explained. This is a decent strategy for two players going heads-up, but for a full table, pre-flop, 'it becomes a question of which approximations to make and which models to choose for your opponents.' Physicists, let's face it, are often pretty adept at choosing the best models.

He also had a corollary: 'Phenomenologists and astrophysicists will be better poker players than string theorists.' Take that, Jeff Harvey!

There’s a saying that Texas Hold ‘Em consists of long stretches of boredom punctuated by three minutes of sheer terror. Poker never lacks for suspense: you can play a hand flawlessly from a probabilistic standpoint, but there is still the possibility you’ll lose; statistical anomalies do happen. In poker, they're known as 'bad beats.' Even with pocket aces and a flop of 9-9-2, your chance of winning a heads-up showdown against pocket queens is only 92%. Harvey once faced just that scenario – and a third queen appeared as the very last card. His opponent “sucked out on the river.”

Temperament matters too. Poker requires nerves of steel, and an emotional equilibrium that Harvey, for one, admitted he does not possess. “You need to be unflappable. Bad luck can’t bother you. It’s too easy to get ‘tilted,’ and start playing looser, more erratic, or too passive.” More often than not, he said, “My emotions get the better of me.”

How can you possibly take into account all those confounding factors in a small study involving 300 players and 60 hands of poker, where the deal is fixed? Quite frankly, you can't. As Dedonno and Detterman concluded in their 2008 paper, 'The reason that poker appears to be a game of luck is that the reliability of any short session is low.... [O]btaining accurate estimates of poker ability may not be easy. Luck (random factors) disguises the fact that poker is a game of skill. However.... skill is the determining factor in long-term outcome.'

Having a good poker face won't hurt your chances either.

Adapted from an October 2010 blog post from the archived Cocktail Party Physics blog.

References:

Dedonno, M.A. and Detterman, D.K. (2008) 'Poker Is a Skill,' Gaming Law Review 12(1).

Ferguson, Thomas, and Ferguson, Chris. (2003) 'On the Borel and von Neumann Poker Models,' Game Theory and Applications 9 (2003), 17-32.

Ferguson, Thomas, and Ferguson, Chris. (2007) 'The Endgame in Poker,' Optimal Play - Mathematical Studies of Games and Gambling, 79-106. Stewart Ethier and William R. Eadington, eds. Reno, NV: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming.

When To Fold Texas Holdem

Ferguson, Thomas, Ferguson, Chris, and Garwargy, Cephas. (2007) 'U(0,1) Two-Person Poker Models,' Game Theory and Applications 12, 17-37.

Fiedler, Ingo C. and Rock, Jan-Philipp. (2009) 'Quantifying Skill in Games—Theory and Empirical Evidence for Poker,' Gaming Law Review and Economics 13(1): 50-57.

Free Texas Em Hold

Meyer, G., von Meduna, M., Brosowski, T., and Hayer, T. (2012) 'Is Poker a Game of Skill or Chance? A Quasi-Experimental Study,' Journal of Gambling Studies, Online First, August 15, 2012.

How To Play Texas Hold'em

von Neumann, John and Morgenstern, Oskar. Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1944.