Best Starting Hands In Texas Holdem Poker

Best Starting Hands In Texas Holdem Poker

One of the basics of Texas Hold’em is understanding card strength

Top 20 Best Starting Hands For Texas Holdem Poker

Start playing online Texas Hold em at the poker sites below! If you follow our recommendations you will Play Texas Hold’em at the best poker rooms, and hopefully win some money. The following is a list of texas hold’em poker hand rankings from the strongest (Royal Flush) to the weakest (High Card). If you’re looking. Poker Starting Hands - Comprehensive guide to which poker hands you should play, including a 2020 Texas Hold'em poker starting hands chart. The strength of your starting hand in Texas Hold'em can help you determine your chances of winning, even before the remaining cards are dealt. From a pair of aces — the strongest starting hand — to a 2 and a 7, knowing the strength of your starting hand is an important part of your success at the table. AA – The strongest preflop starting hand in Texas Hold’em. KK – Second best in the game, you only slow down the aggression if you see an Ace on the flop. QQ – Third on the podium, a premium holding. JJ – The intermediate pocket pair of the Top 10 Texas Hold’em Starting Hands.

One of the key aspects of winning a game of poker is to be able to make the most correct decisions as often as possible; therefore, selecting the hands you will go to war with is among the first steps. Making the decision whether to move forward with the hand you got is one of the most frequent ones to make during a game of Texas Hold’em. To succeed at this is not only important to know what hands to play or to fold, but also to know why it is done so, when you face a complex situation, you have a solid base to make the best decision. The first step would be to know the best and worst hands you could get.

The best hands typically include the highest possible pairs like A-A, K-K, Q-Q, or J-J, which are already good so the pressure of improving their value down the road is not that much. These are made hands already and there is less chance of one of your opponents holding a higher pocket pair. Besides pairs, the next best thing will be to have suited A-K or A-Q, which have a good chance to become pairs once the community cards are there. They also have the potential to become high straights and the fact that they are suited gives you the possibility of getting the best possible flushes.

On the other hand, there are some hands to stay away from. These are hands that are worthless unless something else happens on the board – they’re not even worth showdown value on the river.
Hands like 7-2, 8-2, 7-3 and 8-3 off-suit won’t really lead you to something great easily. It can, for instance, become a low pair. Having a low card with a high card also puts you at a disadvantage. When competing for the pot when both you and your opponent have pairs, a low pair won’t give any added value.

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Starting Hand Selection:Chen Formula : Sklansky Starting Hand Groups

The Sklansky & Malmuth starting hands table.

GroupHands
1AA, AKs, KK, QQ, JJ
2AK, AQs, AJs, KQs, TT
3AQ, ATs, KJs, QJs, JTs, 99
4AJ, KQ, KTs, QTs, J9s, T9s, 98s, 88
5A9s - A2s, KJ, QJ, JT, Q9s, T8s, 97s, 87s, 77, 76s, 66
6AT, KT, QT, J8s, 86s, 75s, 65s, 55, 54s
7K9s - K2s, J9, T9, 98, 64s, 53s, 44, 43s, 33, 22
8A9, K9, Q9, J8, J7s, T8, 96s, 87, 85s, 76, 74s, 65, 54, 42s, 32s
9All other hands not required above.

This table comes from the book Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth.

This is a strategy book for limit Hold'em, but the starting hand groups do have some practical use in no limit Hold'em.

What is the Sklansky and Malmuth starting hands table?

Top 10 Best Starting Hands In Texas Hold'em Poker

The table is a general ranking of hands in Texas Hold'em.

The Sklansky and Malmuth starting hands table groups together certain hands in Texas Hold'em based on their strength. Starting with the strongest set of hands that you can be dealt in group 1, the hands get progressively weaker working down the table until the virtually unplayable hands in group 9.

The rough idea is that a hand in one group has roughly the same value and can be played the same way preflop as any other hand in that group.

How to use the starting hands table.

In their book, Sklansky and Malmuth provide some in-depth guidelines for starting hand strategy in limit Texas Hold'em using this table. Unfortunately, I'm not going to work out any guidelines for you for the NL Hold'em game using this table because:

  1. It would be quite a tricky job.
  2. It would be difficult to remember and implement.
  3. Like any starting hand strategy, it would have its flaws.
  4. You should avoid using strict guidelines and set rules as much as possible during play.

Best Starting Hands In Texas Hold'em Poker

So really there is not a lot to take away from this table from a purely strategic perspective. Nonetheless it's interesting to see how specific starting hands compare to one another based on their preflop value.

If you're really after a starting hand strategy guideline, try the Chen Formula.

Sklansky and Malmuth hand rankings evaluation.

Although it's a very popular hand group rankings table, it's not going to do you too much good to learn the whole thing off by heart. In my opinion, the real value of this table is being able to see how different starting hands can be grouped together and ranked based on their value before the flop.

For other useful charts and tables, see the odds charts page from the Texas Hold'em tools section.

Go back to the awesome Texas Hold'em Strategy.

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