You may be tempted to slowplay pocket Aces or Kings to conceal the strength of your hand and let your opponents catch up with you on the flop. Don't do it! Especially as a beginner, you can get into a lot of trouble if you try to slowplay your big hands. While premium pocket pairs are big favorites to win before the flop, anyone who hits the right flop with any two cards can hit a bigger hand than yours. If you don't raise before the flop, you're just making it cheaper for mediocre hands to hit a monster on the flop.

For example, let's say you just limp into the pot preflop with pocket red Aces in early position. Unfortunately, no one raises you and instead, 3 others players limp into the pot. Both blinds stick around and the flop shows down 4-6-5, all spades. This is an awful flop for you. Because you didn't raise preflop, you've made it easy for hands like 7-8 or K-8 of spades to call the minimum bet. Both hands have you beaten at this point, and it's very difficult to lay down your Aces in this position. You stand to lose a large pot here. If you raised your Aces, no one may call your raise, but at least you've won a small pot. Why get greedy? Is it not always better to win a small pot than lose a large one? This is especially important in online play, where your opponents will routinely play slim draws and they'll call you down with something as weak as bottom pair. If you let them stick around cheaply, you're asking for them to draw out on you.

A quick note on slowplaying: it is correct to slowplay if you've hit a real monster hand such as top set, the nut straight, the nut flush, a full house, or better. So long as there aren't any obvious draws to a better hand, you should consider slowplaying your hand to allow your opponent to catch up and make something that he'll give you some action with. If you have those same red Aces and the same 3 callers but the flop falls A-K-K of all different suits, you better slowplay it! You've got the top full house and you want to let your opponents catch up to you.

Try not to play your mediocre hands like K-J, J-10, and suited connectors from early position. Sure, we all get tempted to play trash hands from time to time, but try to keep that temptation to a minimum. There is nothing worse than trying to sneak into a pot with a trash hand only to have one of your opponents throw a big raise at you. You'll have to throw your hand away and you've just cost yourself a bet. There is a time for drawing hands, and we'll get to that in late position. An important concept to keep in mind: money you didn't lose is just as good as money you won.

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