Monday, 11th January 2010

Top 20 Poker Starting Hands

Posted in the category.

Poker is all about the odds.  Many players don’t want to believe that. They would prefer to think that it is abut bluffing, and skill, and aggression.

And, lately, they seem to think it is about luck.

And it does have all those elements present, but using them in conjunction with a firm understanding of the odds involved is not only more profitable, but it is also the only real way to play poker, whether online or in real life.

So, sticking to the top twenty starting hands will mean that you always have the odds – good odds – in your favor.

AA  AKs  KK  QQ  JJ  AK  AQs  AJs  KQs  TT  AQ ATs  KJs  QJs  JTs  99  AJ  KQ  KTs QTs

Did you notice how many small and medium sized pairs are in that list? If you didn’t notice, it’s zero.  That’s NO small or medium pairs.

That does not mean that you shouldn’t play small or medium pairs. Far from it. Some of your biggest wins will come from playing some small starting pair, or even from playing no pair at all. But this article is not about that – it is about the top twenty hands that you can be dealt in a card game where you are dealt two cards.

So let’s take a look at the odds for these premium starting hands.

You are likely to be deal a pair of aces as hole cards once somewhere between one hundred and two hundred hands. The exact odds of being dealt pocket aces are 169 to one. But we don’t have to be too exact about it, a rough approximation will do. So a premium starting hand of two aces comes along once every one hundred and fifty hands or so. And there are twenty premium hands listed above, so you can expcet to be dealt a hand from the list once every seven or eight hands. Again, roughly speaking.

The odds of winning with aces in the hole range from a high of 80% when you are only up against one other player, all the way down to just over 20% when you are facing a full table of players.

The odds of winning with a hand at the lower end of the range, a Queen Ten suited, are just under 50%.

So hopefully you can see that even when you do get a good hand you are in no way guaranteed to win with it. Even when you play them properly and everything goes the way you planned, your aces will still get cracked about one time in five, or thereabouts. And your Queen Ten won’t hold up more that five times out of ten. And again that is when you play them properly. When you mis-play your aces, and you must have done if there is a full table of players in the pot with you at the showdown, your odds of winning dramatically reduce to barely one time in five, and that win is really only based on pure luck, as you can’t think that going to the river with pocket aces and not having made enough of a bet to scare off at least some of the players was skillful play.

For beginners to the game, these hands are the hands that you should be willing to play. Lesser hands should be discarded more often than not. And these are the hands that you should be willing to play properly.

They are premium – meaning that you should play them with confidence and strength. Having had you aces cracked before, maybe two or three times in a row, should not shake you confidence and cause you to play these with anything less than the expectation that playing them strongly is the right way to go.

Stop expecting towin with aces everytime – it does not happen. Stop moaning when they get cracked by some fish that got lucky on the river – that is always goingt o happen. Instead focus on the expected winning percentage and make sure that thorough proper play you are going to win enough money to more than pay for those times that you got rivered.