Haxton faced plenty of preflop decision-making as he navigated to a first-place finish in the Poker Masters $10,000 Short Deck event last fall for $176,000, overcoming a field of 55 entries. Seeking to outline some basic tenets of the preflop game, PokerNews spoke with renowned poker theory expert Isaac Haxton on the subject. Short deck strategy is still in its early stages, as the community as a whole is certainly very far from reaching the level of understanding that's been attained in regular hold'em. For an inexperienced player, playing horrible starting hands kills any chance of making money on jump street, while using good starting hand selection gives the novice a solid foundation from which to build a winning strategy.
Of course, it isn't quite that simple, as there are times when hands like ace-king offsuit are far superior to something like nine-eight suited, and there are times when the latter becomes just as playable in certain situations.īut in general, the first and most crucial lessons involve starting hand selection. When it comes to learning how to play Texas hold'em, the most basic lessons begin at square one: the starting hands.
