The odds of flopping a royal flush in Texas Hold'em in any given hand is 1 in 649,740 (before cards are dealt). If you have a suited hand with two high cards (like Q♠ J♠), you have a 1 in 19,600 chance of hitting a royal flush on the flop. Ans: Texas Hold'em is a game of high cards hence the higher cards are always considered for the win. So the player with higher card wins the pot in such scenarios. For example: say, player A has two hole cards of K♥, K♣ and player B has hole cards of K♠, 10♦ while the cards on the community cards.
Poker is all about making the best five-card hand from the seven available (five community cards and your own two hole cards). That means in the event of a tie with four of a kind, three of a kind, two pair one pair or high card, a side card, or 'kicker', comes into play to decide who wins the pot.
Texas Holdem Hole Card Rankings
Based on the tabulated data and chart generated, there are a few interesting observations to be made. The are listed below:
1. Pair A is best hand
There should be no surprise that Pair A is the best hand. Having a pair A, helps you to easily get the best possible double pair combo or three-of-kind combo. While it might be harder to strike straight or flush with it, those scenarios are typically less likely to happen. Thus, making pair A better in general.
2. Offsuit 72 is the worst hand
This might be less known to people and it could be counter intuitive. Some might have thought that perhaps Offsuit J2 would be worse than Offsuit 72. But, that is not the case.
To understand why this is the case, we can start thinking about what are combinations that are most likely to lead to a winning combo assuming no one folds. Given any hands, we are more likely to win with double pair, followed by 3-of-a-kind, straight flush and so forth.
With offsuit 72, we are more likely to win double pair of pair 7 and pair 2, followed by three-of-a-kind and so on. However, it is also worthwhile to note that it is highly like other players has a better double pair or three-of-a-kind. This bring us to the next important lesson to learn.
3. Having a suited, closely connected hand with A, K or Q is better than having pairs that is less than 9
If you were to investigate the table or chart, the hand ranked 5th is Suited AK. What is even more interesting is pairs hand only took 6 spots from rank 1 to rank 20. Most of the remaining spots were taken up by suited, closely connected hands with a high card like A, K or Q.
The reason for this is similar to previous point that we made. It is more frequent that players will win using double pairs or 3-of-a-kind. Therefore, having a higher card helps to push you to a better standing to win.
One final note on this topic - Pair 9 is the last pair hand ranked in the top 20 hands. Playing any other pairs hand may not be as good as conventional wisdom might suggest.
4. Winning chance drops fast within the top 7 ranked hands
This is the lesson that really took us by surprised. While developing our poker odds calculator, we did had a sense that odds of winning was somewhat asymmetric. But, the chart above really solidify how much the asymmetry was.
Within the top 7 ranked hands, the probability of winning drops really fast from paired A to paired K and so forth. If you get the top 7 hands, you really should work hard to get through the preflop.
5. You are more likely to win a 6 players match than a 9 players one
A player with hands that are in the top 7 ranks in a 6 players game have a much better chance of winning in a 9 players game. For example, Paired A has roughly 49.5% preflop winning probability in a 6-player game compared to only 35% in a 9-players game. While 14.5% difference is not as big as it sounds, it has a significant impact on the pot odds that you will need to make a value play. In short, it might be easier to make money off a 6 players game rather than a 9 players game.
6. In a no-folding six players match, your hand range to play is very large
This point is not as crucial as other points we have made. But, we find this observation quite interesting although it is unlikely to happen in real life.
Suppose that we are in a no-folding 6 players Texas Hold'Em match. During every betting session, our pot odds is 5-to-1. This means that for every $1 we bet, we stand to win $5.
Based on this pot odds, our break-even pot equity or winning odds is around 16.67%. Using the chart above, we can see that we can play any hands better than rank 106. This means that players can play 105 types of hands out of 169 types (59.2% of all types) and still perform better than break even! Basically, you have a very large hand range to play in this type of situation.
Nonetheless, this is a just-for-fun analysis, which does not happen that often in real life. Based on some of our experience playing, it could happen sometimes during preflop though.
7. Our hand rankings are similar to Sklansky hand groups
Sklansky hand groups was formulated by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth. Both of these old school poker players understand the math very well. It is no surprise that our hand rankings aligns very well with their proposed hand groups.
Sklansky hand group proposes that Tier 1 group consists of pair A, pair K, pair Q, pair J and suited AK. These cards are essentially ranked 1 to 5 via our Monte Carlo simulation. The same observation can be made for Sklansky Tier 2 and Tier 3 hand group.
As you have enlightened your knowledge about how to play Texas Hold'em poker, the five-card combination is determined to be the best based on the hand ranking. To fathom the hand ranking better we have fabricated a few frequently asked questions (FAQ) from which you can understand the hand ranking with live game scenarios.
So let's learn about the hand ranking ( highest to the lowest rank):
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
Qn : Straight or flush, which is a better hand?
Ans : 5 cards of the same suit is called the 'flush' which is ranked higher than the 'straight' that is 5 cards in a sequence. This is one of the most common confusion that rises among the new players.
Qn : What if two players in the table form the same pair of combination?
Ans : In such scenarios, the pot money is equally divided between the winners. This happens only if the players have the same pair of hands or else even a single high card could change the winner.
Qn : What happens if two players form a straight hand each?
Ans : In poker, the straight's are usually represented in higher cards like straight–to- ten (10♥, 9♠, 8♠, 7♦, 6♥) so the player forming the higher card wins the game.
For example: let us take two players A and B, say player A has two hole cards of 9♥, 10♠ and player B has hole cards of 4♠, 5♦ while the cards on the community cards are 5♥, 6♣, 7♦, 8♠, 9♦. In this case, player A (6♣, 7♦, 8♠, 9♥, 10♠) wins over player B (4♠, 5♦, 6♣, 7♦, 8♠) because player A has higher cards when compared to player B.
Texas Holdem Card List
Qn : What happens if two players form a Full House each?
One final note on this topic - Pair 9 is the last pair hand ranked in the top 20 hands. Playing any other pairs hand may not be as good as conventional wisdom might suggest.
4. Winning chance drops fast within the top 7 ranked hands
This is the lesson that really took us by surprised. While developing our poker odds calculator, we did had a sense that odds of winning was somewhat asymmetric. But, the chart above really solidify how much the asymmetry was.
Within the top 7 ranked hands, the probability of winning drops really fast from paired A to paired K and so forth. If you get the top 7 hands, you really should work hard to get through the preflop.
5. You are more likely to win a 6 players match than a 9 players one
A player with hands that are in the top 7 ranks in a 6 players game have a much better chance of winning in a 9 players game. For example, Paired A has roughly 49.5% preflop winning probability in a 6-player game compared to only 35% in a 9-players game. While 14.5% difference is not as big as it sounds, it has a significant impact on the pot odds that you will need to make a value play. In short, it might be easier to make money off a 6 players game rather than a 9 players game.
6. In a no-folding six players match, your hand range to play is very large
This point is not as crucial as other points we have made. But, we find this observation quite interesting although it is unlikely to happen in real life.
Suppose that we are in a no-folding 6 players Texas Hold'Em match. During every betting session, our pot odds is 5-to-1. This means that for every $1 we bet, we stand to win $5.
Based on this pot odds, our break-even pot equity or winning odds is around 16.67%. Using the chart above, we can see that we can play any hands better than rank 106. This means that players can play 105 types of hands out of 169 types (59.2% of all types) and still perform better than break even! Basically, you have a very large hand range to play in this type of situation.
Nonetheless, this is a just-for-fun analysis, which does not happen that often in real life. Based on some of our experience playing, it could happen sometimes during preflop though.
7. Our hand rankings are similar to Sklansky hand groups
Sklansky hand groups was formulated by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth. Both of these old school poker players understand the math very well. It is no surprise that our hand rankings aligns very well with their proposed hand groups.
Sklansky hand group proposes that Tier 1 group consists of pair A, pair K, pair Q, pair J and suited AK. These cards are essentially ranked 1 to 5 via our Monte Carlo simulation. The same observation can be made for Sklansky Tier 2 and Tier 3 hand group.
As you have enlightened your knowledge about how to play Texas Hold'em poker, the five-card combination is determined to be the best based on the hand ranking. To fathom the hand ranking better we have fabricated a few frequently asked questions (FAQ) from which you can understand the hand ranking with live game scenarios.
So let's learn about the hand ranking ( highest to the lowest rank):
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
Qn : Straight or flush, which is a better hand?
Ans : 5 cards of the same suit is called the 'flush' which is ranked higher than the 'straight' that is 5 cards in a sequence. This is one of the most common confusion that rises among the new players.
Qn : What if two players in the table form the same pair of combination?
Ans : In such scenarios, the pot money is equally divided between the winners. This happens only if the players have the same pair of hands or else even a single high card could change the winner.
Qn : What happens if two players form a straight hand each?
Ans : In poker, the straight's are usually represented in higher cards like straight–to- ten (10♥, 9♠, 8♠, 7♦, 6♥) so the player forming the higher card wins the game.
For example: let us take two players A and B, say player A has two hole cards of 9♥, 10♠ and player B has hole cards of 4♠, 5♦ while the cards on the community cards are 5♥, 6♣, 7♦, 8♠, 9♦. In this case, player A (6♣, 7♦, 8♠, 9♥, 10♠) wins over player B (4♠, 5♦, 6♣, 7♦, 8♠) because player A has higher cards when compared to player B.
Texas Holdem Card List
Qn : What happens if two players form a Full House each?
Ans : Texas Hold'em is a game of high cards hence the higher cards are always considered for the win. So the player with higher card wins the pot in such scenarios.
Texas Holdem Pocket Card Rankings
For example: say, player A has two hole cards of K♥, K♣ and player B has hole cards of K♠, 10♦ while the cards on the community cards are K♦, 2♣, 10♥, 8, 10♣. In such scenarios, the player A with a card combination of (K♥, K♣, K♦, 10♥, 10♣) wins over the player B with a card combination of (k♠, k♦, 10♦, 10♥, 10♣) because the player A has the highest ranking hole cards.
Texas Poker Card Rankings
Qn : What happens if nobody forms any combination of cards?
Ans : In the game of poker when no player forms any combination of cards the highest ranking card wins the pot.
Best Starting Hands In Texas Holdem
For example: Say, player A has A♥, 10♦ and player B has K♣, J♥ while the community cards shows the community cards of 8♣, 4♠, 2♦, 5♦, 9♥. Player A wins the pot as player A forms A♥, 10♦, 9♥, 8♣, 5♦ and player B forms K♣, J♥, 9♥, 8♣, 5♦ where A is the highest ranking card.
Free Texas Holdem Cards Play
Now that you have good knowledge about how to play poker as well as the hand rankings, Log-in and kick-start your win towards big pot.
