| How to Play
Blackjack
Roulette
Baccarat
Video Poker
Texas Hold-em poker
 |
| Poker Slang |
| Starting Hands |
| Basic Mistakes |
| Bad Beat VS Idiots |
| Home |
| Play for money |
 Texas Hold-em PokerOpening Hand Rankings
The common mistake most beginners make is calling too many hands to often.
Your hole or pocket cards have a different strength based on the cards and they effect how you should bet and play the hand.
There are two factors that determine how to play your pocket cards
The cards themselves
Your position in the betting round
The strongest positions for betting is to be in the dealer or cut off positions as you have seen all the action from the other players and based on the betting patterns you should be able to estimate the strength of your opponents cards compared to your own.
We will discuss betting behaviour in the how to bet section, here we are focusing on how your opening hand is ranked.
There are 1,326 possible combinations of being dealt two cards, of which there effectively only 169 real options, as 10 - j suited has the same hand strength regarless of the suit, same as a pair of 2's is a pair of 2's, regarless of the suit.
There are various forms of statistics that have been used to determine the hand strength, from monitoring millions of hands in real game play, to lab enviroment play.
In lab enviroment every hand was played to the river and no hand was folded whereas obviously in real world play hands were folded and not every hand went down to the river - and the results are fairly similiar in which hands are the strongest and which hands are the weakest. I will list a comparison table soon, but first I will show the top hands that you should alwys bet with and the worst hands that you always discard.
PLEASE REMEMBER THAT POKER IS A GAME OF SKILL COMBINED WITH LUCK. YOU WILL SEE PEOPLE WINNING WITH HANDS THAT SHOULD'VE BEEN FOLDED. IN THE LONG RUN, BY PLAYING THE CORRECT HANDS WITH THE CORRECT BETTING STRATEGY, YOU WILL WIN MORE THAN YOU LOSE.
Another point to remember is that even though there are some hands you should always play and some you should always fold, poker is not a game of steadfast rules, and you need to have confidence in yourself, in the way you are playing and how the rest of your table is playing.
The WSOP was won by Doyle Brunson twice in a row with a real crappy 10-2!
Regardless, by learning which are the best and worst hands will help you improve your general all round play.
The Worst starting hands that you should always fold:
2 - 3 suited and unsuited - in real world games 2 - 3 suited is the worst ranked and the most expensive hand. More people have lost on 2 - 3 than any other hand.
2 - 7 suited and unsuited - considered to be the worst starting hand in texas hold-em. As more people tend to hold onto the suited cards, more people lose on the suited than the unsuited combination.
, 2 - 4, 2 - 5, 2 - 6, 2 - 8, 2 -9 - suited and suited. And yes, you can flop a straight or even a straight flush with a 2 - 5 suited BUT it is the second most expensive hand in real world games. All the suited combinations of this paring have cost players more than the unsuited pairing as players hold onto the low suits too much. FOLD these suited cards.
A -2 ,A - 3, A - 4 unsuited - very costly hands, with A - 2 ranked at 162 and A - 3 at 153 in real money games as costing players money.
3 - 7, 3 - 8, 3 - 9
4 - 8, 4 - 9, 4 - 10, all expensive hands
10 -2 - The Doyle Brunson, of which there is only one. Doyle won the WSOP twice with this hands - for the rest of us it is very costy, so fold. Once again the suited pair costs players more.
J - 2, J - 3, J -4, J - 5, J - 6, J - 7, Q - 2, Q - 3, Q -4, Q - 5, Q - 6, Q - 7, K - 2, K - 3, K -4, K - 5 (all unsuited). Yes on occasion a face card with a low card might win you a hand, and are probably ok fo rhead to head showdowns, but in the long run these are costly hands. K2, 3, 4 are ranked 154, 155 and 156 as the most expensive hands, With Q2 - 7 not far behind.
The top starting hands are:
A - A. You unfortunately will not win every time with this opening pair, but you will win 85% of the time
K - K . A great hand, but they do get cracked by the A's - so don't rush in until you see the Flop!
Q - Q. You should expect to win about 79% of the time with the ladies.
J - J. Will win it for you at leat 77% of the time
A - K. (suited and unsuited) Looks very good and though pairs 77 - 10,10 should do better statiscally, in real world games this is the 5th best money maker..though once again raise high but go higher if the flop falls your way.
A - Q, A - J suited and offsuit.
10 - 10, does very well in money games, and exceptionally well if there are no face cards on the flop.
A - 10 , K -J, K - Q - very highly ranked, with the suited obviously paying more than the unsuited draw.
Pairs 88, 99 - both ranked in the top 20 money earners
Q- 10, A - 9, Q - j suited doing better than the off pair, but all good money earners.
J - 10, A - 8 and 77 ranked about the same.
Marginal calling hands
As we mentioned earlier, position of betting is also a major factor in which hands to call and how much to bet. These hands could be called in a late betting position if there is little or not much action before you.
Once again the suited hands earning better than the off suit hands.
A,7
Q,9
K,9
9, 10 (mainly suited)
A-6,5,4,3,2 - SUITED!! Fold the non suited.
66, 55, 8 - 10 and 8 - 9 suited
Most other hands, unless you are one of the blinds, fold.
It is very hard to fold a good hand. If you have for example a K-Q or Q-Q or 10-10 and the flop is A, J , 5 and someone is betting high, they probably do have an Ace - Folding good hands is very very hard, so pay attention to the table. If the table buy in is max R100 and someone has R280 - they are playing their good hands and probably not bluffing, be alert and as much as it hurts, sometimes your pair of Q's is just not good enough.
| Poker Slang |
| Starting Hands |
| Basic Mistakes |
| Bad Beat VS Idiots |
| Home |
| Play for money |
|