Starting Hands In Poker Chart

Poker Tournament Starting Hands Guide From Harrington On Holdem

1. Printable Poker Hands Chart
2. Poker Strategy Charts
3. Poker Best Starting Hands
4. Texas Holdem Poker Odds Chart
5. Texas Holdem Starting Hands Chart

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. Starting Hands: The Main groups With our handy chart you can see what hands to raise, call, and fold with depending on your position. The range of hands will differ depending on how many players. Having such a memorization mechanism that allows you to have a decent starting hand chart in your head is only going to help you in very very early stages of learning the game. There are a lot of books and poker strategy websites where such charts can be found. Print out this free poker hand rankings chart – and always know the best winning poker hands. Poker hands are ranked in order from best to worst. Royal Flush An ace high straight flush. Straight Flush Five consecutive cards in the same suit. Four of a Kind Four cards of the same rank. Poker Hand Rankings Chart. Print out this free poker hand rankings chart – and always know the best winning poker hands. Poker hands are ranked in order from best to worst.

- Do These Starting Hands Work Online?

In ‘Harrington On Holdem Vol 1' Dan Harrington outlined a tournament starting hands guide based on table position and your poker playing style. There are actually 3 styles covered: Conservative play, aggressive or LAG play and ‘super aggressive' play. Since the latter style has no requirements this article will focus on the first 2.

The question this article will discuss is whether the starting hands mentioned are suitable for the lower level ($3 to $50) MTTs most commonly found online.

We will start by outlining Harrington's Starting Hand Guide for poker tournaments and then look at the various stages of online poker tournament strategy to see how they fit.

Harrington's Tournament Starting Hands Guide – Conservative Approach

• Early Position (first 2 players to act): Pairs 10-10 to A-A , A-K off-suit and A-Q suited.
• Middle Position (places 3-6 to act): Pairs 8-8+, A-J off suit or better + K-Q
• Late Position (Button and Cut-Off): Pairs 7-7+, Any Ace + Suited Connectors J-10+

Dan Harrington's suggestion for the conservative player is that these hands should be raised when no other player has already entered the pot. Where a player acting before you has already raised you need a hand from a higher group, compared to your position, in order to call. For example, if you are in middle position and someone has raised ahead of you then you need an ‘early position' hand to call this bet.

Mark's Tip: Simply playing a more disciplined starting hand selection than your opponents is enough to give you a long-term edge in the smaller buy-in games. Check out my list of the Best Beginners Poker Tournaments for some extremely profitable ideas!

Harrington's Tournament Starting Hands Guide – Aggressive Approach

Hand Requirements To Raise: Any Pair, Any Ace, Any 2 Face-Cards + Suited Connectors 4-5 and higher.

Notice that there are no specific requirements for position here. The idea being that an aggressive player will raise to open a pot with these hands from any position. If someone has already raised then the requirements must tighten up. Harrington deals with this situation via numerous hand examples – you'll need to read the book!

Stages Of An Online Poker Tournament – Harrington's Starting Hands Analyzed

Conservative Approach – Early Stages

The advantage to the conservative approach in the early stages is that it will keep players out of trouble at a time when there are many wild, loose and otherwise inexperienced opponents at the table. While the criteria mean you'll be throwing away hands which may be favorite for a single raise – those times you do enter a pot you'll generally be a solid favorite to win.

Conservative Approach – Mid to Late Stages

Once the blinds start to rise as a proportion of your stack the need to accumulate chips increases. At this point the conservative starting hands start to become too tight. Imagine you have a pair of 9's in mid position and a wildly aggressive player makes a small raise ahead of you – or you have 6-6 and the table folds to you on the button with only the extra-tight blinds to act. There are so many factors involved, including stack sizes and tendencies of opponents, that strict guidelines here would reduce your flexibility too much.

Conservative Approach – Final Table

If the conservative approach is too tight for the mid stages, by the time you reach the final table these poker tournament starting hands would be a disaster. The stacks will be shallow by now, meaning that stealing and re-stealing become significant factors. These hands will most probably only result in you blinding your way out of the tournament.

Aggressive Approach – Early Stages

Opening a large number of pots in the early stages will require significant post-flop skills. The reason is that you will be called by a variety of players – each with a wide variety of holdings. This is great if you flop a monster hand. Planetside 2 engineer suit slot. However the times that you miss – or partially hit the flop – will create many potentially dangerous situations.

Aggressive Approach – Middle Stages

As the stacks become shallower compared to the blinds, the merits of the aggressive approach to tournament starting hand selection increase. You will be able to steal many pots – especially from late position. Caution when opponents have already raised ahead of you will make this approach even more effective.

Aggressive Approach – Final Table

At the final table an aggressive approach may well be your best chance of securing one of the (higher paying) top 3 places. Many opponents will have tightened up their own starting hand requirements here – looking to move up in the money. Selecting a wide variety of starting hands will allow you to win many pots without a fight. The stack sizes could also be factored into your hand selection here, raising ‘lighter' when the blinds are not too big stacked or too short.

Dan Harrington's Tournament Starting Hands Guide – Summary + Further Reading

The conservative approach to starting hand selection appears good for keeping out of trouble during the wild and loose early stages. However later in the tournament more aggression is required – both to stay ahead of the blinds and to win pots. If you have a skill edge over your opponents then it makes sense to choose a site where the blinds increase in smaller increments - giving you more time to exploit your opponent's mistakes before the game becomes a 'crap shoot'.

Red Kings Poker hit the sweet spot for online poker tournaments. As part of the huge OnGame Poker Network, they have a ton of cross over traffic from the big betting brands like Bwin and Betfair. At the same time the selection of tournaments is fantastic, from the tiny $2 games through to the 'Sunday Major' called the Champion Chip. This cool site will give you a choice of 6 welcome bonuses, plus the chance to grab an extra $300 in bonus cash by getting beaten holding the two red kings! Check out Red Kings Poker for yourself - it will open your eyes!!

100% Match to $500 With Bonus Code = SNG500

To be fair Harrington covered this increase in aggression with his theory of inflection points and ‘M' scores. The key with any starting hand guide is to allow your self the flexibility to step outside of this when the situation at the table warrants this. Finally, for a guide to the best online poker tournaments for beginners check out our detailed look at 10 of the best: Best Beginner Poker Tournaments – 10 of the best!

Related Articles

One of hold'em's most crucial decisions is, do I see the flop or don't I see the flop? In this lesson we'll examine the importance starting hand selection and what factors you need to consider before deciding whether to hold'em or fold'em.

There are 169 different two card starting hand combinations in hold'em poker. This number assumes, for the sake of argument, that is the same as , or any other suited combination. If you are not dealt a pair, then your starting hand will either be suited or unsuited, and either connected or unconnected (gapped). This means your starting hand will fall into one of the following five categories:

• Pairs – e.g. , ,
• Suited connectors – e.g. , ,
• Connecting cards – e.g. , ,
• Suited unconnected cards – e.g. , ,
• Unconnected cards – e.g. , ,

Unconnected cards might be one, two, three-gapped, or more. The bigger the gap, the less chance you have of hitting a straight. For example, if you hold 73, then you'd need a flop of 456 for the straight. But holding T8, you could flop a straight with 9JQ or 679.

The Best Starting Hands in Hold'em

Printable Poker Hands Chart

Let's start by talking about the best starting hands, which are often referred to as ‘premium hands'. There is some disagreement amongst poker players as to which starting hands are the best, but few would dispute the value of the first of our three main groups, Aces and Kings.

Group 1: AA, KK

These two starting hands are the major players in hold'em. It's not often you'll get dealt Aces or Kings. In fact you get either Aces or Kings once in every 110 hands, so it's not nearly as often as we'd like. Aces are by far the best possible starting hand in hold'em, closely followed by Kings. However, you should be aware that even Aces or Kings can get cracked, and they don't play too well against multiple opponents. This means you should definitely be raising pre-flop to narrow the field. Extra caution is necessary when playing Kings, because if an Ace falls on the flop then you're losing to anyone who has a single Ace in their starting hand. While they are very strong hands which most players love to get, they are certainly not unbeatable.

Group 2: QQ, JJ, AKs

Queens and Jacks are great starting hands, and with either of these, you can usually be confident you have the best starting hand. Of course they are dominated by Aces and Kings, but they're a favourite against all other starting hands. While Queens and Jacks will occasionally run into a player holding either Aces or Kings, it doesn't happen too often. Play these cards strongly, and always look to raise with them.

Ace-King is known throughout the poker world as Big Slick, and when suited it's often called Super Slick. While it isn't a ‘made hand', unlike a pair, it offers great potential. It's only a big underdog to Aces and Kings, and even pairs like Queens and Jacks are only slight favourites. The beauty of AK (suited or unsuited), is that it dominates so many other hands like AQ, AJ, AT, and so on. These types of hands are the ones that players usually end up pushing all-in with late in a tournament.

Group 3: TT, AK, AQs, AJs, KQs

This next group of starting hands is also a strong bunch. You should definitely be looking to raise pre-flop with any of these hands too. We've already talked about the power of AK, but starting hands like AQs, and AJs, are also very strong and often run into weaker Ace-X combinations. Even though these are all strong starting hands, and most of the time you'll be winning pre-flop, you have to be careful – particularly a hand like KQs, which you can easily fold to a re-raise.

Suited Cards

You'll often hear novice players responding to questioning of why they played a particular starting hand with the line 'well, because they were suited'. Some suited cards are worth playing and it's certainly better to start with suited cards than unsuited cards. However, the odds of flopping a flush is 1 out of 118 hands (0.8%) with two suited cards, and you'll only make a flush after the river around 6.5% of the time. Don't fall into the trap of playing any two cards just because they happen to be suited – it doesn't make a big enough difference to make junk hands valuable.

Kicker Issues

The word ‘kicker' means the smaller of your two cards. Some players play a hand if it contains an Ace with any other card (such as an Ace with a 3 kicker), and this type of play ultimately cost players money and tournaments. For example, let's suppose a player calls with A6 and the flop comes A83. What does the player do? bet? call? raise? call a big raise? go all-in? What if the flop comes Q63? The player has middle pair – which is very hard to play. Hey, the flop could come A6X – the player has two pair, Aces and sixes but this happens only 1 out of 49 hands (2%). Until you learn when and how to play Ace junk (AX) go slow with it. One good thing about A junk and K junk, is that you do not need to play these hands to learn when they may be profitable. Let experience from other hands and study be your teacher.

Table Conditions

Hold'em starting hands can be a complex subject because every situation is different. If you were to ask a professional poker player, 'should I call, raise, or fold this hand pre-flop?' his response would almost certainly be 'it depends!' Here are some of the main reasons why it depends:

The Number of Players

The value of certain starting hands is very dependent upon the number of players at the table. Certain starting hands are always going to be under threat against a table of nine or ten players, but the value of these same hands increases when there are fewer players. A starting hand like KJ might be vulnerable against a full table of players, but is considered a strong hand if there are just a few other players.

Position

Your position on the poker table will be a major factor in deciding which starting hands you should play. The later your position in the betting order, the better – because you get to decide what to do after most of your opponents have acted. We'll talk much more about the importance of position throughout our lessons on Pokerology, but as a first step please see our lesson on the value of position. Playing position can elude us at first because it is a part of poker that lends itself to be exploited through experience. However, you must quickly realize that your position at the table should heavily influence the choice of starting hands that you play. Until a player has a feel or grasp for positional play, just believe and follow some of the suggestions on the subject.

A Raised Pot

Whether or not a pot has been raised should be a very important factor in your decision to play a particular starting hand. Your selection of starting hands should change when the pot has been raised by a reasonable player. If there has been a raise and a re-raise before you're due to act, then you should only consider playing with a very strong hand. Of course this will also depend on the personality types of the other players and whether the game is very loose or passive.

NJ online casino bonus codes. Bonus codes are the same as promo codes. It comes down to what a casino decides to call it, but the core function is the same. NJ online casino bonus codes do exactly what promo codes do. They provide you with access to unique offers. Limited-time promotions and bonuses. Hard Rock Casino Bonus code January 2021. Bet365 New Jersey Bonus Code. Published by JohnnyBet Virgin Casino Promotional Code. Published by JohnnyBet Related articles: BettingUSA-NJ Comments (0) Add public comment. Cancel Add comment Bonus 100% up to $250 (Only 1x Wager!). Nj online casino bonus codes 2021.

Starting Hand Charts

When you first start playing poker it can be helpful to use a starting hand chart as a point of reference. We've created a couple of starting hand charts that can be used by beginners. Please click on the following links to view these charts (they will open in a new window):

Each of these charts loads as a PDF, meaning they be viewed on screen, bookmarked or better still, can be printed and studied offline.

Poker Strategy Charts

Beginners can treat starting hand charts as the gospel, but once you know enough about the game to recognize appropriate opportunities, you can deviate because your adjustment may represent a more profitable play. Our starting hand charts are a guide, not a set of intractable rules. There is no such thing as a perfect starting hand chart, because every game is different and there are many variables at work. Game texture and table conditions can't be measured and included into a neat formula.

There are many factors that may encourage you to tighten or loosen your play from our guidelines. If you have a starting hand that's not listed on the chart, then there's a good reason – it should almost always be mucked. But as in all poker decisions the phrase, 'It depends' comes to mind. However, before you decide to deviate from our guidelines, have a reason for taking such an action.

Conclusion

Don't fall into the trap of playing any two cards. Most poker players want to play hands and as a beginner it's very easy to be seduced by suited cards or picture cards, or any two-card holding that contains an Ace of a King – but if you play hold'em correctly, you're going to be selective and toss away the vast majority of hands you're dealt.

When you gain more poker playing experience you can begin to open up your range of starting hands – but until then, proceed with caution and only play the best hands. Loose, promiscuous play will get you into trouble and is the downfall of many players.

In future lessons we'll expand much more on the topics discussed in this poker lesson and get you to think beyond the actual cards you're dealt. We also have hours of video footage covering starting hand selection for both no-limit and fixed-limit hold'em – so depending upon your preference, be sure to check them out!

Poker Best Starting Hands

By David Sasseman

Texas Holdem Poker Odds Chart

David lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and has played over a million hands online and many thousands of hands in Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, and Las Vegas casinos.

Texas Holdem Starting Hands Chart