Poker Hand Rankings & The Best Texas Hold’em Poker Hands. Poker Hand Rankings. The best hand possible, a royal flush consists of A, K, Q, J and 10, all of the. Poker Hand Rankings Quiz. Tie-breakers and Kickers. Ranking The Top 20 No Limit Texas. Trashy – Hands like Q5o, J6o, 52o and 84o are among the weakest starting hands in Texas Hold’em and should never be played as a raise first in. The majority of Texas Hold’em starting hands are in this category, so it’s important to get into the habit of only selecting appropriate hands to play from each position.

These are the traditional poker hand rankings, which are used in the most popular variants of poker (such as Texas Hold‘em).

Whether you’re looking to learn how poker hands rank or what beats what in poker, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s get started.

Poker Hands from Highest to Lowest

The following poker hand rankings relate to more traditional and popular game types, including:

• No Limit Hold’em
• Limit Hold’em
• Pot Limit Omaha
• 5 Card Draw

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The hands are ranked from strongest to weakest.

1. Royal Flush
The best hand possible, a royal flush consists of A, K, Q, J and 10, all of the same suit (extremely rare).

2. Straight Flush
Also very rare, a straight flush consists of any straight that is all the same suit.

3. Four of a Kind
Four of a kind, or ‘quads’, consists of four cards of equal value along with another card known as a side card.

4. Full House
A full house consists of three cards of one value and two cards of another.

5. Flush
A flush is a hand which has all cards of the same suit.

If 2 or more players get to showdown with a flush, the flush with the highest card wins.

6. Straight
A straight has 5 cards of consecutive value that are not all the same suit.

Note that an Ace can be either the high or low end of a straight, but not both at once. So, A-K-Q-J-10 and 5-4-3-2-A are valid straights, but 2-A-K-Q-J is not. 5-4-3-2-A is also known as the wheel, and it is the lowest possible straight.

7. Three of a Kind
Also known as ‘trips’, three of a kind is 3 cards of the same value and 2 side cards of different values.

8. Two Pair
Two pair consists of two cards of equal value, another two cards of equal value, and one extra card.

When two opposing players have two pair, the player with the highest pair wins the pot. For example, Aces and Threes beats Kings and Queens. If both players have the same highest pair, the player with the higher second pair wins. If both players have the exact same two pair, then the player with the higher extra card wins.

9. One Pair
One pair consists of two cards of the same value, and three extra cards. This is the lowest ranking “made” hand.

10. High Card
Five cards that do not interact with each other to make any of the above hands.

Tie-breakers and Kickers

In the event multiple players have the same poker hands, the extra cards come in to play. These cards are called ‘kickers’. The player with the higher kicker will take the pot in this event.

No Limit Hold’em Example: Player AandPlayer B

• Player A has K♥ 9♥
• Player B has A♠ K♦
• The flop, turn and river are K♠-T♣-T♦–4♠-2♣

This means the player’s final poker hands are:

• Player A: K♥ K♠ T♣ T♦ 9♥ for Two Pair, Kings and Tens with a Nine kicker
• Player B: K♦ K♠ T♣ T♦ A♠ for Two Pair, Kings and Tens with an Ace kicker

The winner of the pot is Player B because he has Player A ‘out-kicked’.

In a high card or one pair hand tie-breaker, both players can sometimes have the same kicker. In this case the second kicker is used, and then the third, and so on. If both players’ 5 card hands are identical, then they share the pot equally.

Top 20 Best Texas Hold’em Hands Rankings

I wanted to include something a bit more exciting in this article, so here’s the top 20 No Limit Hold’em starting hands in terms of raw all-in equity (or percentages).

Although the order of the best poker hands to start with is sometimes contested, this list will give you a rough idea of which hands are stronger than others.

I hope you enjoyed this list of poker hands rankings!

Read more:

Source:@Upswingpoker.com

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.

Top 20 Best Starting Hands For Texas Holdem Poker Tournament

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.

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.

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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.

Top 20 Best Starting Hands For Texas Holdem Poker R Pogo

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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