 To become a winning Texas Holdem player, it is important that you are able to exercise good starting hand selection. This means that you throw away the bad hands, and play the good hands that have the greatest potential to win you money. If you are always entering pots with a strong hand, then you will be greatly increasing your chances of winning money from the game. Good starting hand selection is at the foundation of every winning poker player’s game, so it certainly something that you should take note of and learn. In this article I will highlight the strongest hands in Holdem and how you should play them.
The strongest hands in Holdem are the ones that are most likely to win against any random hand after all 5 community cards have been dealt. These typically include hands like big pocket pairs and big suited connecting cards, with pockets Aces being the number one starting hand in Holdem. Here is a list of the top 10 starting hands in order of strength:
First Tier Hands:
- AA
- KK
- QQ
- AKs
- AQs
- JJ
- KQs
- AJs
- AK
- TT
As you can see, the big pocket pairs and the big suited connectors dominate the top 10 list of starting hands. The small ‘s’ that accompanies some of the hands signifies that they are suited, and so these are ranked higher than their unsuited counterparts as suited cards will have a slightly higher chance of winning because they can make a flush with greater ease.
If I were to be dealt these kinds of cards in every hand I played, I would be in no doubt that I would be a very profitable poker player. However, the fact of the matter is that a lot of the time I will be dealt cards that are far worse than the ones listed above, as the top ten starting hands only constitute to roughly 5% of the total possible starting hand combinations in Holdem. So even though I should stick to playing the best hands, if I only ever played these cards, I would only ever be entering one in every twenty pots. So it looks like we need to start playing a few other starting hands to save us from wasting away at the poker table.
If we only ever played the best hands, we would find that we are folding far too many hands and losing money to the blinds to make it a profitable way to play. On top of that, our opponents would notice that we are only ever playing with the best hands, and so they would avoid getting into pots with us. So it is a good idea to stretch out our starting hand selection a little, whilst at the same time being cautious of playing hands that could get us into trouble. Here is another set of ten hands that we could consider playing at the Holdem table.
Second Tier Hands:
- 99
- AQ
- ATs
- 88
- AJ
- 77
- KQ
- KJs
- AT
- KJ
By playing these hands we have widened our starting hand selection and so we are able to get involved with a few more pots if the situation allows for it. And this is a very key point, we should only play this second set of hands if the situation allows, as these particular starting hands can easily get you into trouble. For example, if you call an opponent’s raise and find that they have you dominated with a hand like AKs when you are holding KJ, we may find ourselves in a very dangerous situation postflop, especially if we both make a pair of kings. So what kind of situations allow us to play these second set of hands?
The best times to play this weaker set of starting hands is when we have good position at the table, and when there has been little to no action before it is our turn to act. If there has been a lot of raising at the table before the action gets to us, we can be fairly sure that one of our opponents at the table would have us dominated with a better hand from the top tier of starting hands, and so it would be dangerous for us to call. Similarly, if we are in early position, we are putting ourselves in a lot of danger by playing these hands, as there is a good chance that another player has us dominated, and we will have bad position throughout the rest of the hand.
As a general rule, you should try and stick to playing the top tier of hands unless you have reason to believe that you can play the second set profitably. As a new player to the game, I highly recommend that you stick to playing with the big pocket pairs and big suited connectors until you feel more comfortable with branching out and playing some of the slightly weaker starting hands. It is important to be strict with you starting hand selection, because if you are entering pots with poor hands, you can only expect to see poor results. Never feel tempted to play any two cards under the notion that ‘any two cards will win’, because you will soon find that your bankroll will be depleting rapidly.
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