About the FoldorRaise.com Setup

Texas hold-'em might seem simple, but it's perhaps the most complicated form of poker. This is because top players play different hands very different ways. You just know that Gus Hansen and Barry Greenstein are going to do different things with ten-seven offsuit.

The complexity of the game stems from the many variables that are present in each hand. Some of these include the type of table (are there lots of aggressive raises or mostly just calls?), the size of your chip stack, the type of opponent (is he tight or loose?), your starting hand, your position and the action so far.

We feel the latter three are by far the most important and that's what we've focused on in the first iteration of FoldoRaise.com.

Each hand you will play will be laid out as follows:

Starting Hand: This is the starting hand you are dealt. Our database consists permutations of all starting hand possibilities.

Your Position: This represents where you are seated at the table. Your exact position is the number in (). We assume that each table has 10 players and that the betting always starts at Position 1:

Early Position - Seats 1 to 3
Middle Position - Seats 4 to 7
Late Position - 8 to 10 (also known as the button, small blind and big blind)

The blinds are assumed to be in late position. In the future, we plan to elaborate on how to play in the blinds.

The Action: This represents the betting of players at the table prior to it being your turn to act. We will note the following actions:

Call - The player called the big blind
Raise - The player raised to a total of 4x the big blind or less
Big Raise - The player raised to a total of more than 4x the big blind

The exact position(s) of the player(s) who made the move is denoted in the () to the right of the action.

In this example:

- You have been dealt Ace-King suited.

- You are in 9th position.
- The player in seat three raised by less than 4x the big blind
- The players in seats four and five called the raise

The reason we~Rve isolated these three variables is because we believe they are the most important and help minimize your losses and maximize your winnings. After understanding the probabilities behind each starting hand in different scenarios, you are much better prepared to add additional layers of complexity to your game. Without knowing how to value starting hands based on your position and the action, you will likely fail as a poker player no matter how good you are at reading people.

Of course, things change drastically once the flop hits. We also plan to launch a similar feature that looks at post-flop scenarios in the near future.

Remember that poker is a game where bad decisions can doom you and good decisions can crush your opponent. Our site will help you avoid bad decisions like playing mediocre starting hands and getting trapped with the dreaded second best hand. Learning to play the right hands in the right positions will help you avoid potential costly tough choices, while also helping you extract the maximum damage when you've got a big hand.

We plan to have additional articles and anecdotes about the different aspects of Texas hold-'em, including online play, tournament updates and strategy, each week.

Click here for more on our philosophy.