Each hand then plays out according to Texas Hold’em rules, with pre-flop, flop, turn and river betting rounds. If you’ve played Texas Hold’em games before, the rules of 6+ Hold’em are easy to follow. The table below illustrates how the hand rankings have changed in 6+ Hold’em to accommodate the shorter deck: The Top Hands. Pocket Aces (A ♥, A ♠) This one is a poker classic. The strongest starting hand in poker, pocket aces are a strong. Pocket Kings (K ♦, K ♣). One of the keys to being a strong Texas Hold 'em poker player is to know which hands are playable and which are not.This list of the top 10 best starting hands for Texas Hold 'em is a good place to start learning.

This grid compares the strength of a particular Texas hold'em hand (in this case ) against all other hands. Each square represents a pair of opponent cards, and the color represents the relative strength of these two hands — the redder the square, the more likely the opponent hand is to win. These probabilities were computed by enumerating all ≈1.3 trillion hands of heads-up Texas hold'em.

Navigating the Grid

Opponent pair cards are organized along the main diagonal, in a band of 4x4 boxes. Opponent suited cards lie along other diagonals. The dark squares correspond to impossible hands, where a card is duplicated.

One of the keys to being a strong Texas Hold 'em poker player is to know which hands are playable and which are not.This list of the top 10 best starting hands for Texas Hold 'em is a good place to start learning. Do keep in mind, however, that there is some disagreement over which hands.

Tidbits

If you are holding a pair, an opponent holding any higher pair has essentially the same advantage over you, regardless of the rank of the pair. In fact, compared to (say) a pair of 6s, a pair of 7s is slightly better than a pair of Aces.

While a pair of Aces is the strongest hand averaged over all opponent hands, the single strongest heads-up face-off is a pair of Kings vs a K+2 offsuit.

Starting Hand Selection:Chen Formula : Sklansky Starting Hand Groups

The Sklansky & Malmuth starting hands table.

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?

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.

Texas Holdem Hand Order

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.

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.

Starting Hands In Hold'em

Go back to the awesome Texas Hold'em Strategy.

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