A Quick Guide for the Newcomers in Poker

If you’re starting your poker journey and are afraid to ask what the best and worst poker starting hands are at this point, don’t tell anyone you’re reading this page and simply get acquainted with the top poker hands quietly. What beats what? You will surely know the answer by the time you’re done reading.

This article is brought to you by DashTickets, whose owner, Mark Dash, played pro poker for a while in New Zealand, and by Slot Day, a slots website with solid ties to poker.

Poker strategy is very complex, and the matter of when and how to play some hand can be debated to death. And you can still get it wrong. That’s why this article intends to give you a decent starting point and provide some basic groundwork for further poker study.

Poker Hand Rankings

To get all the bases covered, we’ll first briefly say what the top poker hands are, ranked from best to worst. Flush beats a Straight, and Full House beats both – this is pretty much everything you need to memorize.

1. Royal Flush – The best hand possible, A K Q J 10 of the same suit.

2. Straight Flush – Same as above, but not to the Ace.

3. Four of a Kind – Four of the same card.

4. Full House – Three cards of one value and two cards of another.

5. Flush – A hand with all five cards of the same suit.

6. Straight – Five consecutive cards that are not all of the same suit.

7. Three of a Kind – Three cards of the same value.

8. Two Pairs – Two cards of the same value and another two of the same value.

9. One Pair – Two cards of the same value.

10. High Card – Sometimes, only your top card is counted.

Poker Starting Hands – When to Raise, Call or Fold?

To get to the first reasonable level of playing poker, you’ll have to know precisely how to play each hand, for example, JJ. You’ll already have a specific elaborate strategy – you won’t simply look at the chart.

That being said, AA is the most substantial hand in Texas Hold’em Poker, while 27 offsuit is usually considered the worst, although some players will argue that 23 is worse.

Your decision will depend on your table position and the players’ actions before you. The later you play, the better, as you’ll already have a lot of information about the other players’ hands.

How many poker hands are there?

There are 169 non-equivalent starting hands in Texas Hold’em Poker. They’re made up of:

• 13 pocket pairs
• 78 suited hands
• 78 unsuited hands

10 Best Poker Starting Hands

AA is the best, with KK just behind. QQ is also an excellent hand but is susceptible to someone else getting a more substantial pair. This pretty much completes the best pocket pairs you can get.

AK suited is the fourth-best hand in poker, as it gives you two chances to get a strong pair, but it’s an incomplete hand.

JJ is a tricky hand to play, even if it’s a complete hand with a strong pair, so this is where strategy comes in. The most apparent mistake with JJ is being married to it and not letting go when all signs say that you should.

AK offsuit is the sixth-best hand in poker, followed by TT, pocket tens. With the latter, you’re probably entering the territory of non-premium hands. Sure, it’s a strong hand, but it’s enough for anyone else to get an Ace, King, Queen or Jack pair, and you’re toast. TT will catch a bluff, though.

AQ suited, AJ suited, and KQ suited complete the list of top ten hands in poker. These hands can accomplish so much as they’re very flexible; they can become flush, straight, high pairs, and pretty much anything else.