Poker Hands Ranked Pre Flop

3/21/2022

Poker Hand Rankings - Texas Holdem Starting Hands Chart. At the bottom of this page is a comprehensive listing of Texas Hold'em starting hands based on their EV (expected value). Expected value is the average number of big blinds this hand will make or lose. This article will take a look - both at the surface and in depth- at the concept of equity, or rather, determining the probability that a hand will win and putting this knowledge to use with respect to your pre-flop game equity and the ORC. This is an article that you should most definitely read, re-read, and re-read again. Experienced players love hands like Queen Jack suited because it offers so many pre flop possibilities. When the flop comes A K 10, K 10 9, or 10 9 8, all three combinations will make Q J the nut straight – perfect for avoiding the pitfall of landing a dummy or low end straight. Poker hand rankings is the first thing you need to learn when starting with poker, and this page will teach you everything you need to know. We will cover poker hands list in order, best poker hands in Texas Holdem and detailed examples of how to analyze your hands when playing.

Poker Hands Pre Flop
Flop Poker Online
Poker Hands Ranked Preflop
Poker Hand Rankings Preflop

Based on 4,000,000,000 simulated games

Use at your own risk
(I'm terrible at Poker, and there could be a bug in my code)

Pre-Flop Hole Card Winning Odds/Probabilities:
Given hole cards XY in an n-player Texas Holdem game, with no cards on the table, what is the probability that XY will beat all other n-1 hole cards after the river?

Actually winning your hands depends on many more factors (as my poker buddies will be quick to point out!)—knowing when to fold on flop/turn/river (even if you started out well), your betting strategy (maybe you're good at bluffing people out), what you think your opponents have (this is probably the most important), the blinds, etc. Poker is complicated. These tables just tell you how good your hole cards are (statistically) just after the deal, which may help you decide whether it's worth paying for the flop or not. That is all.

Historical note:
These statistics were the result of a fun, personal coding project on the side during grad school at the University of Illinois. Enough people are finding this page useful, and so I've decided to keep the page up. May the odds be with you.

Pre-Flop Folding Strategy - Summarizes these Tables

Ranked by Winning Percentage

10 Player
9 Player
8 Player
7 Player
6 Player
5 Player
4 Player
3 Player
2 Player

Ranked by Wins+Ties Percentage

10 Player
9 Player
8 Player

Poker Hands Pre Flop

7 Player
6 Player
5 Player
4 Player
3 Player
2 Player

Check out a heat-map based visualization of these probabilities by Jeff Lowery

Flop Poker Online

These statistics are © Apu Kapadia, 2005

In short, your decisions in the pre-flop betting round should be based on three key factors:

Your hand strength
Your position at the table
Your opponents’ action in front of you

We now look more deeply at how to apply these basics in the specific environment of the cash-game tables.

Hand selection

As in all games of Texas Hold’em, be it tournament play or a cash game, you will need to categorise your starting hand. (Refresh your memory of what we mean by “monsters”, “very strong hands”, “speculative hands” and “trash” in the Poker Basics lesson.)

By and large, it is correct to raise with monsters and very strong hands; it is better to be more circumspect with speculative hands; and trash should be thrown away. As you get more experienced you will add other factors, but the core decision is based primarily on that list.

However in a cash game, you will have a bigger stack compared with the big blind, so you can tend to play more speculative hands. The reasons for this are twofold: firstly we are risking a much smaller proportion of our stack to enter a pot pre-flop. Secondly, if we hit, we will win a far bigger pot.

Therefore the risk/reward calculation changes with 100 BB stacks in a cash game. In some instances we should be happy to call pre-flop with a hand that we might ordinarily throw away. (The notion of “pot odds” is discussed in more depth later.) You can afford to call and miss with speculative hands like smaller pocket pairs and suited connectors against raises, knowing that you will fold if you miss.

The larger stack sizes also free you up to play slightly unorthodox poker at times. You might want to call with a very strong hand instead of re-raising. Or you might want to call a re-raise with a weaker speculative hand.

Your decision will need to take into account the effective stack size, as discussed in the last lesson.

For example: You are on the button with 3♣3♠ and a very tight player raises from early position. It is very likely that he holds a big pocket pair, so you will need to hit a set to win.

If your assumption is correct and the tight player has a big pair like A♥A♦ or K♠K♣ it will be tough for him to get away from his hand on a flop like 3♦Q♦10♠. You are very likely to be able to get the maximum amount of chips in the pot.

Therefore if the effective stack is 100 BB in this situation, you can certainly call the raise and hope to hit your set. The times you hit and win a big pot will make up for the times you miss and lose.

But if the effective stack is only 20 BB, you cannot win enough. Your relatively small profit will not make up for the times you miss. You should fold 3♣3♠ if you or your opponent is short-stacked.

In later stages of tournaments, play like this this simply doesn’t work. You usually play with a shallow stack, where fancy moves can cost you your tournament life. That is not true in a cash game, where the small investment pre-flop can grow into a big one if you hit the right flop.