The poker strategy of the most successful poker players leads them to play a tight but aggressive game.  Your own strategy should follow these basics:

First,  don’t play too many hands.  You should be folding 60 or 70% of your hands,  especially in online games.  Why waste money on a poor hand?  You can check your stats if you play in online poker rooms,  and if you fold preflop less than 60% of the time,  you are probably playing weak cards too often.  Decent poker strategy calls for you to fold more hands!

Next,  go into a game knowing what sort of hands you’re willing to keep and play.  In Texas Holdem,  pocket hands you should probably play include:  1.  painted cards,  or other high value cards;  2.  Two cards of the same suit;  3.  High-rank pairs,  certainly Queens and better,  but Jacks,  10s and 9s might depend on how expensive the table is;  4.  Two connected cards of a straight.  No one-gappers.

As the game begins,  your poker strategy is to immediately present the information about yourself you want the table to believe.  If you ever want to bluff,  you’ve got to make them think you never do;  by folding bad hands consistently and repeatedly before the flop,  you’ll cause the others to believe you have a great hand when you don’t fold.  Be predictable and stable,  at first,  at least. When you finally get a really good hand,  push your poker strategy for all it’s worth and raise,  right away.  This is especially important in Holdem,  where slowplaying and allowing others to build up second-best hands is foolhardy.  The strategy of poker says that too many players staying in the hand means someone is likely to get a second-best hand,  or someone could get an unexpected gift card late in the game and give you a bad beat.