Texas Hold'em starting hands

Starting hands chart: which hands should you raise?

Find your two cards in the grid. Suited hands (both cards the same suit) are above the diagonal, offsuit hands below it, and pairs on the diagonal. The color shows the earliest position you can raise the hand from when everyone before you has folded.

• Raise from any position
• Raise from middle position or later
• Raise from the cutoff or button
• Fold when it's folded to you

A simplified chart for a full table (8–9 players) with about 100 big blinds, assuming nobody has raised before you.

Why does position matter so much?

Position is where you sit relative to the button, and it decides when you act. The players who act last see what everyone else did before they decide, so they can play more hands profitably.

The small and big blinds act last before the flop but first on every later street, which makes them the hardest seats to play well. When everyone folds to you in the small blind, use roughly the late-position range.

How do you read hand notation like AKs and 72o?

• A, K, Q, J and T (10) are the ranks: "AK" means an ace and a king.
• s means suited — both cards are the same suit (A♠ K♠). There are 4 ways to be dealt each suited hand.
• o means offsuit — two different suits (A♠ K♥). There are 12 ways to be dealt each offsuit hand.
• A pair like 77 can be dealt 6 ways. In total there are 1,326 two-card starting hands, which group into 169 distinct types — one per cell of the chart.
• + means "and better": 77+ is 77 up to AA; ATs+ is ATs, AJs, AQs and AKs.

What should you do when someone raises first?

Play tighter. A raise usually means a real hand, so many hands you'd happily raise yourself become folds.

• Re-raise (3-bet) with AA, KK, QQ and AK.
• Call with JJ down to 22, AQ, AJs, KQs and suited connectors such as JTs and T9s — mostly when you act after the raiser and the stacks are deep enough to win a big pot when you hit.
• Fold most other hands, especially offsuit hands like AJo, KJo and QJo against an early-position raise; they're often dominated by a better ace or king.
• In the big blind you've already paid one bet, so you can call a single small raise with a wider range.

How much better are suited hands and pairs?

Suited cards win only a few percentage points more often than the same ranks offsuit, because they occasionally make a flush. Two suited cards flop a made flush less than 1% of the time, so don't overrate them.

Small pairs are played mostly for the chance to flop a set (three of a kind). That happens about 11.8% of the time — roughly 1 flop in 8.5 — so they need deep stacks to be worth calling a raise.

How do the practice table's computer players rate hands?

They use the Chen formula, a quick points system devised by poker player and mathematician Bill Chen. The odds assistant uses the same score to label your starting hand.

1. Score your highest card: A = 10, K = 8, Q = 7, J = 6, any other card half its value (a 10 is 5 points).
2. Pairs: double that score, with a minimum of 5.
3. Suited: add 2 points.
4. Gap between the cards: subtract 1, 2, 4 or 5 points for a gap of 1, 2, 3, or 4 or more ranks.
5. Add 1 point if the cards are connected or one-gapped and both are below a queen — they make more straights.
6. Round up to the next whole number.

Frequently asked questions