Top 15 Best Poker Hands
Posted : admin On 11/17/2019Nov 28, 2019 Starting with the top of all poker hands isn't enough to guarantee you the pot. 15 Events Confirmed So Far. Best Poker Chips: Top Poker Chip Sets for Home Games in 2020.
May 13, 2009 Unless you have a very good reason to do so, as a beginner poker player you should stick to playing only the top 10 to 15 hands, period. The more you play, and the better you become at the game, the more hands you can add to your playlist. Until then, keep it simple, and always head to the flop with the best of it. Top 15 Hold'em Starting Hands. Relating the Top 10% Range to Your Online Play. The top ten percent of starting hands serves as a basic chart for profitable hole cards; however, the most important use of this list may be to assign specific ranges to your opponents’ tendencies. Once you know what ten-percent looks like, you will be able to recognize what 3% looks like and 20%. Aug 13, 2019 There are 10 possible 5 card poker hands: royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, high card. There are 1,326 possible 2 card starting hands in Texas Hold'em. The best starting hand is pocket aces, while the worst is seven-two offsuit. Toby Bochan is a writer, editor, poker teacher and the author of 'The Badass Girl's Guide to Poker.' Updated February 05, 2019 If you're new to Texas Hold'em, getting a handle on the best hands and figuring out what beats what can seem a little intimidating at first. If you're new to Texas Hold'em, getting a handle on the best hands and figuring out what beats what can seem a little intimidating at first. You probably don't want to trust your opponents to fill you in. Not to fear—here's a quick guide to the 10 top hands you might be lucky enough to call yours.
There are several hands that you can be dealt out when playing poker. Below we have listed the strongest to lowest poker hands you can be dealt when playing poker variants such as Texas Hold’em Poker.
Those hands listed at the top of this guide to the top 10 poker hands are the strongest and highest valued hands, and it is worth mentioning due to them being much rarer hands you may go quite a while before you actually see one being dealt out to you or even your fellow players!
The highest valued poker hand and one that you are going to want to be dealt out to you when your fellow players all have high valued hands is the Royal Flush hand.
The hand is simply made up of a set of five cards which are the Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten cards, and to be a Royal Flush they must all be in the same suit. Get this hand when playing poker and you should be laughing all the way to the bank!
A Straight Flush is another very strong hand and one you will be hoping t get dealt out to you are often as is possible when you are next playing poker online or in a land based environment.
This hand is five cards which are all consecutive and in addition to them being consecutive they must all share the same suit.
If the cards that share the same suit are not all consecutive this hand is then deemed to be a much lower valued Flush hand as described lower down this page.
You may have already guess what a poker hand known as a Four or a Kind hand contains as the name goes give this hand away!
If you haven’t worked it out then this type of hand is one in which you have four matching cards such as 4 x 5’s along with any fifth card.
This is a fairly strong hand and one that can be expected to take a lot of pots, unless the player holding this hand comes across a player who is holding one of the above two hands that is!
You should get the occasional Full House hand dealt out to you from time to time when playing poker, and this hand is one that is made up for a three of a kind hand and one pair (see below).
This hand could therefore be a hand with 3 x Kings in it and 2 x 3’s.
This is another of those hands that as soon as you form it then you are in a good and strong position and should, if all goes to plan, pick up the pot at the poker table you are playing at!
Any hand which contains five cards all of the same suit is classed as a Flush hand, those five cards must not be consecutive they must be non consecutive to be classed as a Flush hand, should the five cards all sharing the same suit be consecutive then this is a hand deemed to be a Straight Flush and is a very strong hand.
One of the mid ranged poker hands which you are always going to have one dealt out to you when playing poker for any amount of time is a Straight hand. This is a hand in which the five cards are all consecutive.
It should be noted that the cards need to be made up of any suit and as such a hand containing a 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, but not all of one suit is deemed to be a Straight hand.
Texas holdem facebook. If the cards are of the same suit this is a Straight Flush hand instead (see above).
You are going to form a Three of a Kind hand quite often when playing poker.
This had is of course fairly self explanatory and it will see you having been dealt out two un-matched cards and three alike cards.
An example of this type of hand is 3 x 4’s and a Queen and a 10 card, this hand is a mid range valued hand and whilst it can take many pots due to its strength as you can see above there are several much stronger hands available so always keep that in mind when you get dealt out this type of poker hand!
As soon as you have two sets of matching cards in your hand along with any third unmatched cards then your hand is classed as a Two Pair hand.
So if for example you have 2 x 8’s and 2 x5’s along with any other card then you have Two Pairs, and that hand may just be worth you taking your chances on.
Any hand you get dealt out which had three unalike cards in it but two cards that are the same, such as 2 x 7’s is called as a One Pair hand.
This hand, depending on the value of the two matching cards can be a risky proposition if you intend playing on which it as there are many more quite easy to achieve hands of a much higher value, namely all of those listed above!
A High Card hand is one you are not really going to want to play on with as soon as you have been dealt it out.
This is a hand of five cards that do not share all on suit and in that hand each card is non consecutive and none matching and the highest valued hand is deemed to be the value of your High Card hand. So for example a Ten, Eight, Six, Four and Two is a ten valued High Card hand.
It’s incredibly difficult to put your opponent on an exact hand. Therefore, most of the time, you have to think in terms of poker hand ranges. Even though you don’t have a specific idea of what cards are in your opponent’s hand, a hand range gives you something to work with.
Beginners may not have thought of this, but winning players make almost all their decisions based on poker hand ranges and knowing the different types of poker hands you might get is extremely important. Your every action changes an opponent’s idea of your hand range and vice-versa. You can have anything when cards are dealt but every fold, call or raise tells something about the range of hands you can have.
Most players fail to make the effort to figure out a hand range. However, every player who intends to be a long-term winner needs to know how to analyze and weight hand ranges.
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Poker Hand Combinations
How to use a poker range calculator? In order to be able to calculate a range of hands, the first thing you need to keep in mind is how many possible hand combinations there are for different types of hands:
Hand Type | Combinations |
---|---|
Pocket Pairs | 6 |
Non-Paired | 16 |
Suited Non-Paired | 4 |
Off-Suit Non-Paired | 12 |
So what does the table tell you?
- There are more variations of non-paired hands than pocket pairs.
For example, if you think an opponent’s hand range is 44 and 87, it’s more likely for the opponent to have 87 (16 combinations) than 44 (six combinations). - There are four combinations of suited non-paired hands and 12 combinations of off-suited non-paired hands. Knowing this makes it easier to calculate the likelihood of an opponent having a suited hand.
Using Hand Ranges in Poker
Here’s a scenario: you raise with AK-offsuit pre-flop and the opponent calls. You know the opponent calls in this situation 15% of the time. According to Equilab, here’s the top 15% of poker hands (although someone’s 15% can include different hands–for example, one might play 66 rather than KT-offsuit):
Top 15% of all poker hands (in blue). |
You have AK-offsuit, and you’d like to figure out how your hand matches up against the opponent’s hand range. So you use Equilab to calculate it and you see that AK-offsuit has 61.36% equity while the opponent has 38.64%. Sounds like a good deal for you.
Most players assume they’d do well but they have never thought their opponent’s hand range through and evaluated it against their own hand. Once you get the habit of using an equity calculator, you’ll be surprised by how much or little equity certain hands have against certain hand ranges.
Your idea of an opponent’s hand range changes with every decision the opponent makes. So let’s say, instead of calling your raise, the opponent decides to raise, which he does 3.75% of the time. Here’s the hand range:
Top 3.75% of all poker hands (in blue). |
Based on the opponent’s hand range, he’d now have ~57% equity. When he just calls, you’re still ahead of his hand range; when he re-raises, your AK-offsuit is in trouble.
Weighted Hand Ranges
But an opponent may play certain hands out of his hand range more often than others. For example, instead of re-raising 100% of the time with 99, he may only do so 50% of the time. Based on your reads, you assign more or less weight to a certain hand in a range of hands and, just like before, calculate how your hand does against it.
And it can make a big difference. For example, an opponent’s hand range is AA and QQ while you have KK. In case the opponent plays both AA and QQ 100% of the time in that situation, you might consider your chances of winning poker around 50%, but if the opponent plays AA 100% of the time and only plays QQ some other % of the time, your chances of winning take a hit. You’d be going against AA the majority of the time.
How to Calculate a Weighted Hand Range
So let’s say you have JJ pre-flop and you’re up against an all-in raise. You think the opponent could do this with AA, KK, QQ, AK, and AQ. How many hand combinations do you beat and how many beat you?
Hand combinations that beat you:
Hand | Combinations |
---|---|
AA | 6 |
KK | 6 |
6 | |
Total | 18 |
Hand combinations that you beat:
Hand | Combinations |
---|---|
AK | 16 |
AQ | 16 |
Total | 32 |
You beat 32 of your opponent’s hand combinations and the opponent beats you with 18 combinations. By using Equilab, we can see that your equity is 42.60%. If, however, the opponent only has AK and AQ 50% of the time (which is a relatively realistic scenario), here’s what happens:
Hand combinations that beat you v2:
Hand | Combinations |
---|---|
AA | 6 |
KK | 6 |
6 | |
Total | 18 |
Hand combinations that you beat v2:
Hand | Combinations |
---|---|
AK | 8 |
AQ | 8 |
Total | 16 |
And by using Equilab, we can see that our equity drops to about 36%. That’s a dramatic difference in the long run. which can make the difference between whether you should call or fold, which obviously depends on pot and bet sizes and how much money you and your opponent have left.
Learning to weight poker hand ranges is worth your while. Weighting hand ranges gives you more accurate information about your chances in different poker situations as long as you determine the hand combinations right. Like in almost every skill game in the world, the more complicated a theory is, the harder it is to execute and the more profitable it is when executed perfectly. With a little bit of work and thinking you’ll get more accurate calculations.
How to Manipulate Hand Ranges
Best Hands Poker
The basic idea of manipulating hand ranges is To make strong hands look weak and the other way around. This way we can get the most out of our hands because either the opponent likes to call when we’ve got a tight range of hands – meaning we can get the money in with a strong hand – or the opponent likes to fold when we’ve got a loose range, meaning we can get the opponent to fold when we have a weak hand.
One of the biggest problems is to recognize what strong and weak play is in an opponent’s opinion. Obviously Lisa and Bart are going to read situations differently and they’re going to end up having different ideas of who’s weak and who isn’t. Another problem is to know who’s been paying attention to the game and who has other things to focus on. You have to rely on the idea that the opponent follows the game at least semi-closely and adjusts his play optimally against your range of hands. Usually it’s easy to tell who’s following the game, though.
The third problem would be to understand how an opponent reacts to the way you play. There are different ways for players to react, obviously, since otherwise all the players would play the same way. Some make logical decisions, some don’t.
All of these points must be taken into consideration when manipulating hand ranges in poker. It’s of no use to build an image for yourself if the opponent pays no attention to the game. It might be counterproductive to build an image if the opponent reacts unlike you expected. You’ll always have to consider these points when building a player image and manipulating your range.
Common Mistakes – Being Optimistic
Top 20 Poker Hands
The biggest mistake when figuring out a hand range is to have too much optimism when making decisions. For example, always believing the best and creating hand ranges that are convenient for you is a huge mistake and misses the whole idea. It’s not just about winning; it’s also about losing the least possible. By realizing your hand range is unprofitable against an opponent’s hand range, you avoid losing money.
Giving Up
Losing is a part of poker and beating most of an opponent’s range doesn’t mean you’ll win all of the pots. You’ll lose a certain percentage of them, and you may even have an extremely unlikely run of losses but such is variance.
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