As a newbie, watch how other people play after you fold, but do your best to forget what you had. Don't look at "what could have been" because anyone can "get lucky" with 3h8d. But if you always play 3h8d do you think you will win more or lose more over the long term? If you lose 10 times playing 3h8d and then win 1 good hand with it, does that mean you won money overall? Or did you lose more in the 10 hands you lost?
And then the thinking goes the other way for good hands. Yeah, AdKd is going to loose, and even lose badly. But you want to be setting yourself up for long-term success.
Another thing about choosing hands this way. The reason they say to do this for beginners is to get yourself into the habit of playing these hands. It's kind of like when you do your addition tables a hundred times in gradeschool. Addition tables are not going to solve calculus problems, but by training your brain you don't even have to think about 4 + 5 by the time you get to calculus. It automatically means 9 for you. As is learning to play good hands. When you're watching 8 players for
tells, calculating pot
odds, fold
equity and outs, and trying to take notes / keep track of what everyone is doing, you want to have a solid foundation in your head to know what to do as soon as possible so you can spend most of your time thinking about how the table has been playing.
Now, I would not suggest paying for play money. You learn too many bad habits that way. At least get started with
freerolls which, although they can teach bad habits when people are going all-in, they at least do show some good play near the middle and end of the tourneys.
But the most important thing is to manage your
bankroll properly. CardsChat has an excellent article on this. I would recommend learning this even before learning anything else, because if you manage to pick up a small bankroll via freerolls or a deposit, this will help keep you playing longer (even bad players can last longer with good bankroll management). So, give this a read
https://www.cardschat.com/poker-bankroll-management.php
And finally, you have to rememeber one last thing. Picking a good hand is only, I dunno, 20% of the way toward winning with a good hand. You will learn so many things that go into making good hands profitable like when to push someone off their hand, when to trap, when to flat out bluff, etc. You just need picking good hands to be second nature. Oh, and don't let what people do on TV alter your style. TV only shows you hands that get action, they don't show you the massive number of hands which someone folds because they were no good. So if it seems like people on TV play junk and win all the time, it's because they aren't showing you all the logic and reasoning that goes into picking that hand to play.
