This nifty little starting hands chart straight from the professionals themselves (slightly modified by me for this game specifically) should help you win more tournaments as long as you follow it. Yes, It’s no doubt that every single hand that you play has some chance at winning the pot, but in the end, it’s better safe than sorry. So one of the biggest tips to playing better at poker is to simply “know when to fold ‘em”. This is where you bring your poker-smarts to the table and take advantage of them by playing with better hands that they don’t have. They have a habit of playing almost every hand, and because of that you know that at least one of them is playing with a mediocre hand. However, despite their appearances, the other guys aren’t poker professionals either. Now the idea of folding these acceptable hole cards may sound a bit insane, particularly because the other four guys at the table aren’t likely to do something like that. Believe it or not, this is also true for starting hands as high as an unsuited A-6, or K-8.

You may think that an unsuited J-7 is worth playing, but what a smart poker player would do is save that call money for something even better and fold that J-7, especially if another player has added a raise to the blind bets. Although you may not realize it, you’re most likely playing too many of your starting hands. One of the first steps to accomplishing this is to know when to play your starting hands (hole cards) and when not to. Poker Night 2 tells you blatantly in the face that in order to win cool-looking TF2 and Borderlands 2 items, you must EARN them by not sucking at poker and playing smart.

Texas holdem starting hands cheat sheet