Best Starting Poker Hands Holdem

Pocket Aces – statistically the best starting hand in Hold’em – are less than a 75% favorite against 2 or more opponents according to my Texas Hold’em hand rankings. If you’ve ever played Texas Hold’em you already know how important starting hand selection is. AA – The best starting hand in holdem.Playable from any position. KK – The second best starting hand. Holds roughly 70% equity versus any ace. QQ – Great strength preflop but becomes difficult to play post-flop when overcards hit. AKs – This is the fourth strongest starting hand, and the strongest unpaired holding. Even against KK, this hand holds 34% equity – and is a coinflip. NL Hold’em Starting Hand Charts One aspect of the game of No-Limit Hold’em that causes beginning players much grief is deciding which hands to play and which hands to dump. NL Hold’em is much more difficult than Limit Hold’em because the value of a hand depends on so many factors other than just the cards in your hand. Follow these hand charts and learn how to play your starting hands at Texas Holdem. The charts below will give you a great starting point on how to play your starting hands. For all of you beginners, we recommend consulting these charts will playing online. We provide 4 separate charts depending on where you are seated relative to the dealer.

Poker Starting Hands By Position

In the first part of the article we looked at Six plus Hand Rankings, where it became clear that the 16 cards missing from the deck in this variant leads to a slight, but important, changes in how strong the starting hands are which we will receive.

Let’s take a look at this in some more details, and work out how this affects the strategy of our game.

Lowest Rake 6+ Games Online
Mobile & Desktop Six Plus Action
PLO & NLHE Variants

Pocket Aces

If we look at traditional Texas Hold’em starting hands, we would expect to get our beloved AA about once every 221 hands, so what about in our new version of the game?

Well, without troubling you with the maths (I CAN do it, honestly!) the answer is you’ll get your pocket rockets once every 105 hands, which is more than twice as often as in Texas Hold’em!

Naturally, what goes for aces also goes for the other pairs – you’ll have a pocket pair more than twice as regularly in Six plus Hold’em (as will your opponent! Don’t forget this important consideration).

Are there any other changes we need to know about regarding starting hands?

Well, let’s take a look at a few examples and see how they compare to normal Texas Hold’em…

Let's Say We have JJ

A naturally tricky starting hand in Texas Hold’em, but one we would probably open-raise with pre-flop. How does it fare in Six Plus?

We need to realize that instead of beating nine other pairs pre-flop, now it is only a favorite against 5, and still a dog to QQ, KK and AA. So it is not as strong in this respect.

However, because 3 of a kind now beats a straight in Six Plus, flopping a set becomes very strong against many hands – flushesare harder to come by, as we saw previously, because there are only nine cards of any single suit available in the deck.

So, how often will our smaller pairs flop a set? In Texas Hold’em it’s about 11.8% or roughly one time in eight. In Six Plus, we will do the maths quickly (just to prove I can!)

There are 36 cards in the pack, we have – let’s say again – JJ in our hand. So there are two jacks left in the 34 remaining cards.

The flop probabilities work out at 2/34 + 2/33 + 2/32 = 0.18, so basically one time in five when we have a pocket pair we will improve to a set on the flop. Not too shabby!

What About the Hated 72 Offsuit?

In traditional Texas Hold’em this is the worst starting hand, and almost completely unplayable. Well, as you can probably work out yourself quite easily, in Six Plus the equivalent hand is J 6 offsuit, which, let’s be honest, would rarely be played even in our normal game!

Lowest Rake 6+ Games Online
Mobile & Desktop Six Plus Action
PLO & NLHE Variants

Playing AK Becomes an 'Interesting' Problem

We know how difficult it can be to play this hand in Texas Hold’em, both pre-flop and post-flop, so how about in Six Plus?

Well, first off, we will be dealt AK about 2.5% of our hands – which is quite a lot of the time, maybe once every five or six rounds at a full ring table, so it’s important enough to learn its worth in Six Plus Hold’em.

If we accept that suited versions become a lot more valuable - flushes beat full houses in our new version - then it can also make sense to play AKs slower than usual. Mixing our game up with AKs hides our play better, while AKo is still a very strong hand which we can 3-bet and even consider stacking off with.

Small Pairs

Of course 66 now becomes the smallest pocket pair. In Texas Hold’em we could consider calling pre-flop raises with this hand if the price was right – flopping a set and cracking a higher pair is our main goal – but now we have to consider that we are essentially playing 22 in a game where set-over-set sees our 6’s screwed, although on the plus side they do now beat straights!

Relative Hand Values

We need to be aware that these change a fair bit from Texas Hold’em, since stronger hands in general are being played across the board. Top pair, top kicker is nowhere near as strong – in fact it is very unlikely to win on its own as a best hand at showdown in 6-max or full-ring when we play Six Plus Hold’em.

There is also the ‘alternative river version’ of the game to consider, when receiving an extra hole card means that hand strengths can become stronger still.

So, in general two pair would be a median winning hand at full-ring – a useful thing to know when planning your hand strategy!

We will look at the change in Pot Odds in part 3, but a casual glance at things like ‘drawing hands’ shows that we are more likely to his many of them, as we have fewer cards left containing the same number of outs. For example, a gutshot – where any of four cards hits for us – now gives us 4/31 chances to hit after the flop, as opposed to 4/47 in Texas Hold’em – a significant difference indeed!

So, we’ve now seen the basics of the game – Hand Rankings, how starting hands differ – and next up are the ‘Pot Odds’ calculations, which will affect our strategy considerably…

Lowest Rake 6+ Games Online
Mobile & Desktop Six Plus Action
PLO & NLHE Variants

Poker Starting Hands By Position

The Best Poker Hand Ever Played
I might be a little a head of Robbie and i don't want to spoil the fun, but I just saw the latest High Stakes…
4 Good Tips for Winning at Poker
Just starting out at poker? You probably want to win - like you see all those players doing on TV. It's a long road to…
PokerTek’s Poker Pro Automated Poker Tables
Do you like to play poker live but are frustrated with the slow speed of the game after getting used to multitabling online? If the…
Subject Poker Decides to Fold 'Em
One of the poker media's leading websites decides to call it quits. Cardplayer Lifestyle thanks Subject Poker for everything they've done for the industry and…
Texas Hold’em – A Guide
It has been described as the “Cadillac of Poker” by the godfather of the game, Doyle Brunson. No-limit Texas hold’em is the main game played…
Webcam Poker - Online Poker Revolution?
This guest post on Cardplayer Lifestyle presents an overview on one of online poker's newest developments: webcam poker. Read more to learn the advantages and…
Top 10 Tips to Surviving Downswings at the Poker Table: Part 1
Here are some tips I think would help anyone experiencing a lengthy downswing at the poker tables: Take a Break, Have A(nother) Hobby, Study, Study,…
Top 10 Tips to Surviving Downswings at the Poker Table: Part 2
When things aren't going well for you at the poker table, there are things you can try to do to get yourself out of the…
Cardplayer Lifestyle Ranked Among the Top 30 Poker Blogs
After more than 1 year online, apparently people are starting to take notice of this site and poker blog. Congratulations to Card Player Lifestyle :-)…

papeconsaepigpig.netlify.com