Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
A pair of queens with an ace-king-ten
A pair of queens with an ace-king-ten will be the high hand in a six-handed game as often as a pair of kings. These three odd cards better the value of your hand very little but they do reduce the possibility of other players' holding a pair of aces and kings. Even when discarding these three odd cards, their values should be remembered because they limit the chances that a player holding aces or kings will make three of a kind on the draw. If you hold Q-Q-A-K-X at the start and catch a queen on the draw, you should bet them up as if you had three aces.
As stated earlier under General Strategy
As stated earlier under General Strategy the player who opens early is in a bad position because he must bet first after the draw. Therefore I suggest that the player under the gun in an eight-handed game should not open with any pair less than aces. The only exception to this ruling is when the pot is extra big and offers better than favorable odds.