How Many Possible Starting Hands In Texas Holdem
Texas holdem Poker is the most popular poker game in the world There are 169 possible 2 card starting hands There are 169 possible 2 card starting hands but only 42 are worth considering under most circumstances. If you are not dealt one of these 42 hands then you will probably save money in the long run by folding and waiting for the next hand. Broadway cards are considered any A, K, Q, J or 10 (T). After the best pocket pairs, the highest broadway cards become the next best starting hands in Texas Hold’em. This fact is because they can make pairs and other holdings that are higher than those your opponent (i.e. AK vs 65 on A95, where both players have a pair, but the pair of Aces. How many possible starting hands are there in Texas Hold'em? Stack Exchange Network Stack Exchange network consists of 176 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.
There are over one hundred possible starting hands in Texas Holdem. That’s just if you take unique combinations. Start taking into account suit, and the number increases dramatically.
Statistically speaking, you’re just as likely to get any one of these starting hands as any other, though there are certain hands you’d much rather get than others. Also, in terms of game theory, some opening hands are a lot more interesting than others. You know what you’re going to do with a pair of aces. Do you know what you’re going to do with ace-two though?
Unfortunately, it’s impossible in place to go through the strategy of every opening hand in poker, we can highlight a certain number of more interesting hands. I’ve chosen five hands from the list of possible hands to discuss below in greater detail. You are likely to run into them if you play often enough, and their relative strengths present interesting challenges.
1 – Pair of Twos
Congratulations… You have a pair. Aren’t you lucky?
Sure. Go ahead and start grumbling now because of all the pairs you have. This one is undoubtedly, statistically the worse pair you can have. Yes, it will beat any hand that doesn’t have a pair, but how often are you likely to have any opponents that don’t have anything and stay in the game?
The answer is not that many. Don’t worry, though, starting off with a pair of twos isn’t as bad as you think if one of two things are true:
- You have position
- There aren’t many people at the table
According to computer models, you are dead even to win with a pair of twos in straight-up play and you will win about a third of the time in a three-player game. Your odds of winning drop off pretty dramatically from there, however. The only thing that could save you, though, is position.
In a lot of ways, a pair of twos is like a stealth attack. As your opponents survey the board and try to figure out what you have, they’re probably not thinking you have pocket twos. So, if you draw into a set or even manage to get three, four, five, six on the board, there’s a chance you can sneak up on the others and win some money.
Still, to win with this hand more often than not, you need to know what the other players are going to do. That’s why you need position. If you find that everyone else is betting aggressive, there’s a good chance your twos are no good, so get out of the hand. If, however, everyone is lukewarm, you might have some money to make.
The Strategy for This Hand Is as Follows:If you’re in a game with any more than three people and you don’t have position, fold and fight another day. If you do have position, call any modest bets or make a medium bet of your own. If someone comes at you hard and raises or re-raises, unless you are working their tells, fold and get them in the next hand.
After the flop and each subsequent card, take the pulse of the table. If someone starts to bid more aggressively and you didn’t get a third two, you shouldn’t be out too much money.
After the last card is dealt and no one feels good about their cards, you have to decide how aggressive you want to be. My advice is to always keep things on the low to moderate side of bidding (think fractions of a pot). Even if someone missed their draw, you might be able to get money from them if you bet lower amounts than getting too aggressive in the end.
2 – Pair of 10s
In some ways, a pair of 10s is going to be like a pair of twos. There are a lot more hands that pocket 10s will beat than pocket twos, but there are a bunch of hands that you’d probably rather have.
Then again, this is poker, and you have to play the hand you were dealt and, surprisingly, pocket 10s are a lot better than you might think. In head-to-head play, pocket 10s win about three-fourths of the time and rarely wins less than 20% of the time, no matter the number of opponents.
On the other hand, pocket 10s don’t beat a lot of hands that people are likely to keep. Also, 10s can appear at the end, middle, or beginning of a straight, so you need to be careful that if you get a set of 10s, that someone else didn’t just complete a straight and are now set to take you down.
Therefore, you really have two options with pocket 10s and how you play them is up to you and your playstyle. If you like to play tight or are light on chips and you have more than two opponents, toss the 10s. You’d do better not taking the risk.
If you’re in the mood to get risky or you have a fewer number of opponents, play 10s like they were much better cards. Be aggressive, make the table think you’re sitting on a gold mine, at least until the flop. If you get your set and there’s no obvious straight draw, keep playing aggressively.
If you don’t get that set, you can still play tough because you do have good cards, and you should be able to scare off the table with them if you bet from a position of strength.
3 – King-Queen Suited
King-queen suited is going to win the hand a little over 60% in head-to-head games, but quickly loses its power in larger games. You have the start off a pretty powerful straight and the chance to make two decent pairs.
If you are dealt king-queen suited to start off, you have to at least make a bet preflop and call just about anything unless someone goes all-in or is just being crazy.
The thing you have to remember is that your opening hand is worthless without some help. You need to be dealt another king or a queen while avoiding an ace to have a winning hand. That’s what you need to call preflop so that you can see what help the board gives you.
Ideally, you want a queen on the flop with no ace. This gives you the best pair with the second best kicker. Either way, feel free to bet aggressively throughout the hand until an ace shows up. Then, you have to assume that someone has a literal ace in the hole unless their betting shows you otherwise.
One last thing, keep an eye out for a flush. That’s one thing this starting hand gives that you can use to your advantage and is another reason to see that flop.
4 – Ace-Two Offsuit
The strategy for ace-two is a lot like the strategy for pocket twos. It’s good at small tables or when you have position.
If neither of those two things are true, you might want to consider folding. Yes, it can feel painful to fold an ace, since it’s an ace after all. However, there are others at the table who probably also have aces in the hole and chances are, they have better kickers than you.
5 – Queen-Jack Offsuit
Percentage-wise, queen-jack suited wins almost the same amount as king-queen suited. It also has a sharp drop off in its efficiency as the number of players climb.
Still, in a lot of ways, this hand should be played about the same way as king-queen suited except that you don’t have the chance to earn a flush draw. You also can’t be quite as aggressive with queen-jack as you can with king-queen because jacks are easier to beat than kings.
Still, preflop, bet with confidence. Feel free to call any reasonable opening bet and don’t be afraid to call a bet outside your comfort zone so that you can see the flop. Also, don’t be afraid to make your own bet preflop, though I wouldn’t bet a significant amount because there are several ways to beat you.
Once you see the flop, you have decisions to make. If you didn’t flop a pair or aren’t set up for a straight, it might be a good time to get out of the hand since your chances of success aren’t as high as king-queen. Then again, if no one is betting aggressively, there’s no harm in riding the hand out and testing your luck.
Conclusion
Hopefully, seeing how these five hands can be played will give you confidence next time you see them. As always, poker is a dynamic game and circumstances can change. The best poker strategy will change from hand to hand, but I think the following strategy will help make you some money if you follow it.
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For a certain segment of new hold’em players, starting hand charts can be fascinating. Even those with many years of experience who have little need to consult such charts still find them interesting as debate-starters.
In hold’em there are 169 different combinations of hands you can be dealt. For those of us who enjoy working with numbers or creating lists with which to organize our lives, there’s something appealing about the idea of ranking all of those hands from 1 to 169, even if we know such a list probably might have only limited value when it comes to actual game play.
In truth, there are actually a lot more possible combinations of hole cards in hold’em — 1,326 of them, in fact. But that total also considers suits as distinct, when in fact before the community cards come the suits are all essentially of equal value.
That is to say, is of the same value as when playing preflop, while and are also of equivalent value. So, too, are the different combinations producing the same pocket pairs all equal before the flop in terms of their relative worth. While there are six different ways to get pocket aces — , , , , , — you're equally happy no matter what suits the cards are.
So we get rid of all of those redundant hands and say that in Texas hold'em there are 169 “non-equivalent” starting hands, breaking them down as follows:
- 13 pocket pairs
- 78 non-paired suited hands (e.g., with two cards of the same suit like or )
- 78 non-paired unsuited hands (e.g., with two cards of different suits like or )
Notice now the non-paired combinations of hole cards neatly divide into equal groups, both of which are six times as large (78) as the smaller group of pocket pairs (13). The total of 169 combinations represents a square, too — 13 x 13 — another curious symmetry when it comes to hold'em hands.
Still, that’s a lot of starting hand combinations — too many for most of us humans to keep in our heads — which is one reason hand ranking charts are appealing and even can be useful, since they help players think about certain two-card combos as “strong” or “average” or “weak” as possible starters.
Setting aside the idea of actually ranking the 169 hands from best to worst, we might think for a moment about other ways of categorizing starting hands in hold’em, using that initial breakdown of hands into pocket pairs, non-paired suited hands, and non-paired unsuited hand as a first step toward coming up with further, smaller groups that are easier to remember.
The 13 pocket pairs we might group as big or “premium” (, , and ), medium ( through ), and small ( through ).
Meanwhile, we might divide each of the other groups into “connectors,” “one-gappers,” and “two-gappers” (and so on), further thinking of them also as “big,” “medium,” and “small” while also keeping separate suited and non-suited combinations.
These categories of non-paired hands are created by thinking about straight-making possibilities (affected by connectedness) and flush-making possibilties (affected by suitedness). There are more ways to make straights with “connectors” — that is, two cards of consecutive rank like — than with two-gappers, three-gappers, and so on. So, too, do you have a better chance of making a flush with suited hole cards than with non-suited hole cards.
Another possible group to create would include “ace hands” — i.e., non-paired hands containing one ace — that can be thought of as “big aces” (e.g., , ), “medium aces” ( down to ), and “small aces” ( to ). Or “king hands,” too. We like keeping these groups in mind, as hands with big cards like an ace or king can connect with flops to make big pairs.
How Many Starting Hands In Texas Holdem
In any case, you can see how these criteria for making categories can help when it comes to building those starting hand charts. And in fact most of those charts feature a similar ordering of hands, with...
- the premium pocket pairs and the big aces (suited and non-suited) up at the top;
- medium and small pocket pairs and big-to-medium suited connectors and one-gappers in the middle;
- and non-paired hands with less potential to make big pairs, straights, or flushes toward the bottom.
How Many Possible Starting Hands In Texas Hold'em
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However, there are problems with relying so heavily on starting hand charts that you don’t take into account factors that can make a given hand gain or lose value. Such as the flop. Or the turn. Or the river. Or other factors — including how your opponents are playing their hands — that can quickly affect the value of your starting hands.
After all, as anyone who’s played even a few hands of hold’em well knows, even if is the highest-ranking starting hand and a non-suited ranks as 169th, a couple of deuces among the community cards is all it takes to make the best hand worst and the worst hand best.
Learning the relative value of starting hands is definitely an important first step when it comes to getting started in hold’em. Other aspects of game play such as the importance of position, knowing when and how much to bet or raise, and thinking about opponents’ holdings and playing styles as hands proceed are good to learn, too, and help show how a great starting hand might not be so great five community cards later.
Poker is not blackjack, a game in which similar hand-ranking guides are sometimes used to inform players’ decisions about how to play. In poker you want to be wary about becoming too reliant on those pretty starting hand charts. They can be great for indicating which hands might be worth playing (and which should be thrown away), but troublesome if allowed to outweigh all of the other important factors that arise as a hand plays out.
That said, starting hand charts can be useful, especially for those new to hold’em. They also can be a big help when picking up other games, too, like pot-limit Omaha or the various stud games, if only to get an early idea what hands tend to play better than others.
But for many such charts ultimately are only themselves a way to get started, before the experience of playing helps players more instinctively recognize both hand groupings and how hands tend to compare in terms of profitability.
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