Poker Hand Rankings Texas Holdem Starting Hands Chart

Use our poker hands reference chart until you are 100% certain of hand rankings. Poker hands from strongest to weakest Royal Flush: Five card sequence from 10 to the Ace in the same suit (10,J,Q,K,A). This chart will give you the rank of Texas Hold’em hands from best to worst. This can serve as an easy list of all hands sorted by strength rather than separated by biggest starting card. I am including all 13 pocket pairs and 78 unique non-paired starting hands for a total of 91 hands.

1. Poker Hand Rankings Texas Holdem Starting Hands Chartting Hands Chart
2. Texas Holdem Hand Strength Chart
3. Holdem Starting Hands Chart

Table Of Contents

Are you struggling to figure out what starting hands to play and how poker positions change the way you play preflop? You are not alone.

This article isn't a poker strategy crash course. Instead of focusing on generic winning poker tips and bankroll management advice like many other training poker sites do, it gives you something different.

It's a collection of advanced poker charts that improves your poker game by showing you how to play preflop. It gives you a clear overview of the starting hands range you should consider through some handy poker hands chart images, PDFs, and Excel files.

Continue reading to learn:

• And lots more

In other words, if you are looking for an in-depth game strategy guide to learn what is the best way to play poker preflop, you'll love this collection of poker range charts.

Why a Page about Poker Ranges?

All poker players have been there. Short-stacked. Bleeding chips with every orbit while staring at junk hand after junk hand. Feeling their chances of winning the tournament dwindle ever further while their stack continues to shrink.

Finally, they get a halfway decent hand. Nobody has entered the pot.

Is it time to shove?

There's an easy way to find out. Enter poker range charts. These handy tools allow players to see which poker hand ranges to play in preflop scenarios where the pot is unopened and a player plans to shove or fold.

Playing the proper ranges according to preflop charts make it so your play can't be exploited, so memorizing these is the key to short-stacked play.

Read on to learn more and find the accompanied printable poker hand ranges chart as a tool you can study to improve your performance when short-stacked.

What are poker ranges?

For those unfamiliar a poker hand range is simply a set of poker hands that may be held by a player. We try to estimate our opponents' ranges because guessing exact hole cards is a fruitless, nearly impossible exercise in most cases.

For example, if the tightest player you've ever seen reraises you preflop in hold'em, you may estimate their range to be aces and kings only.

On the other hand, if a player who hasn't folded one hand in an hour calls your raise, you may estimate their range to include any two cards in the deck. Of course, most hand ranges will be somewhere in between.

How Do You Calculate Poker Ranges?

Analyzing ranges can be a tricky proposition, and only by learning game theory and playing thousands of hands can a poker player get better at it.

Including some proper proper preflop strategy in your poker training will help you understand what poker hand ranges they'll play.

The more time you spend playing and watching opponents' hands at showdown, the more clues you'll get about their strategy. That will enable you to get more precise estimates of their ranges when playing future hands.

This video from poker pro Jonathan Little explores the concept in a little more depth and tries to answer the question 'how do I think in terms of hand ranges?'

How to Use Preflop Range Charts

Every position at the poker table has a certain range of starting hands that can be profitably shoved at a given stack depth.

Generally, these stack depths are at 20 big blinds or less.

Preflop range charts outline the hands that constitute a winning shoving range.

A player who knows these charts can shove with a positive expected value (+EV) no matter what cards are held by the opponents remaining to act.

Here on PokerNews you find free preflop poker charts for five different stack depths at both six-max tables and nine-handed tables.

Here's how to use them:

1. Figure out how many big blinds you have in your stack.
2. Go to the corresponding chart. If you have a stack that doesn't match one exactly, pick the closest one.
3. Go to the column that corresponds to your seat.
4. Scroll down until you get to the row that corresponds to your hole cards — the chart starts with pairs at the top, then ace-high hands, then king-high and so on.
5. You can shove all of the hands listed there, as well as any hands to the left that were shoved in an earlier seat.

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Poker Ranges Charts

Here are 10 essential poker charts to help your preflop poker game.

They're broken into two categories: full-ring ranges and six-max ranges. Each category features shoving hands for five different stack sizes, raised in increments of three big blinds.

As you'll often have stacks in between these sizes, it may take a small amount of guesswork and intuition to expand or tighten the ranges a bit and get the appropriate strategy.

1. Full Ring Ranges Poker Charts

2. Six-Max Ranges Poker Charts

Use the Printable Poker Charts on Excel!

Want to bring all the poker charts with you? Make a copy of this shared Excel file and download the full collection of our advanced poker charts.

To create your own copy of all the poker charts on this article:

• Click on 'File'
• Then click on 'Create a Copy'
• Done! You can now use all these poker ranges charts to improve your win rate!

These are optimal poker ranges for winning chips if your opponents are calling correctly. Each poker chart should be adjusted depending on reads you can gather when you play cash games or tournament poker.

• If your opponents are calling too wide, shove a little tighter so you're more likely to have the best of it.
• If your opponents aren't calling wide enough, widen your range of hands and shove a few extra hands because you are likely to be able to steal their blinds.

Considerations should also be made for the state of the poker tournament, i.e. proximity to the money bubble, a pay jump, or a final table.

These can heavily influence calling ranges and proper shoving strategy, changing the way you should play if you are using these poker charts to play winning poker.

Some bits of the poker ranges charts may look a bit weird, specifically in regard to suited ace-high hands.

This is because some of the small suited aces perform slightly better against calling ranges than middle aces. At certain stack depths and positions, it's better to shove ace-five suited than ace-seven suited, for example.

How to memorize poker ranges

Given that there are 169 different hands in Texas hold'em poker, differently sized tables, and slightly different shoving ranges for every stack depth, it's unreasonable to think you'll be able to perfectly memorize an exactly correct shoving strategy.

Furthermore, doing so would probably be counter-productive, as you're better off dedicating your brainpower and efforts elsewhere.

Getting a rough idea of correct preflop poker ranges to shove will allow you to play well with a short stack while still improving your game in other aspects with your remaining study time.

There's no handy acronym like 'Roy G. Biv' (rainbow colors) or 'PEMDAS' (order of mathematical operations) to help you remember the shoving strategy offered in all the preflop range charts on this page.

And despite what other poker guides and poker training sites say, the purpose of poker charts like these ones is not to have you memorise everything. That's not how you will improve your win rate.

The best way to learn is to make your shoves and then continually check afterward whether it was correct. Eventually, the raising ranges will start to take shape in your memory.

Here are a few poker tips to keep in mind:

• Pairs are great to jam with. If you're under 10 big blinds, you can almost jam with any pair from any position. With such a small stack, waiting for top pairs is not a good idea.
• If your cards are unpaired, it's obviously preferable to have high suited cards.
• Small suited hands lose a lot of value in preflop shoving situations compared to their deep-stacked playability. Many hands wind up unimproved by the river, so the higher cards will win in these spots.
• Still, hands with a high card and low card (something like king-five offsuit) might be favored against something like ten-nine suited in a head-to-head clash, but the latter performs better against opponents' calling hands, so it's preferable to shove with.

• The biggest jumps in shoving range will come the closer you get to the big blind — i.e., the difference between shoving in the first two seats is far less than the difference in shoving between the button and small blind.

  This is because one extra fold represents a much bigger portion of the remaining opponents, meaning the likelihood of running into a big hand has decreased more significantly. So, get comfortable shoving very wide in the small blind and still quite wide from the button and cutoff.

Most Common Preflop Ranges

_{All percentile ranges you see below are taken from pokerhandrange.com}

Top 7%

If you run into a very tight opponent, expect here or she to be opening something like the top 7% of hands from early or even middle position. Only the tightest ranges will play this way.

What does that look like? About as strong as you'd expect:

• 88
• ATs , AQo
• KJs

Top 15%

Opening the top 15% of hands is still quite tight, but allows a bit more play down to the strong offsuit Broadways, most of the suited aces, and all of the suited Broadways.

It's probably close to a 'typical' opening range for a standard live player:

• 66
• A5s , ATo
• K9s , KJo
• Q9s , JTs

Top 35%

If you run into a player who is aggressively trying to steal seemingly every time it's folded to them in late position, their range might be in the top 35% or so of hands, or potentially even wider.

That's going to include a great many suited combos with even just one Broadway, as well as some fairly weak offsuit holdings down to jack-nine:

• 33
• A2s , A5o
• K2s , K8o
• Q4s , Q9o
• J7s , J9o
• T7s
• 97s
• 87s

Top 60%

Only the absolute loosest, most aggressive opposition will play a range this wide, but it certainly does happen.

The top 60% is usually reserved for short-stacked players shoving from the button and small blind, so if you wonder what that range might look like, here it is:

• 22
• Ax
• K2s , K3o
• Q2s , Q5o
• J2s , J7o
• T2s , T7o
• 94s , 97o
• 84s
• 74s
• 64s
• 54s

Additional Readings

Now that you have our starting hands range and you have all the information you need on your Excel printable file, it's time to continue this poker lab experiment with more poker guides.

If you are really committed to playing better poker, here's a list that will help you reach your goals.

• Essential Poker Tips: a complete collection of the most effective poker tips we know. While some might be more beginner-oriented, other tidbits might help also more seasoned players.
• Poker Equity: one of the most popular poker articles ever published in our advanced poker strategy section. This is one of those must-read poker guides you need to go through at least once in your (poker) life.
• Poker Positions: having our printable poker range charts in PDF is not enough to become a winning poker player. You need a lot more — including this guide to poker positions. Learn how every position named at the table and learn how to use everything to your advantage when you fire up your poker software.
• The Best Online Poker Sites: the world-famous and award-winnings PokerNews rankings. If you ever wanted to play a hand of online poker, this is the perfect starting point for you.
• Mobile Poker Sites: some poker software a great on desktop, but how about their mobile apps? Read this one to find out what brands offer the top mobile products in the industry.
• Free Poker Sites: Not all online games cost money. All the sites on this list offer great poker games that will cost you nada.
• Poker Freerolls: want to win real money prizes but don't want to risk your own? play a freeroll! This page gives you access to all the top free poker tournaments happening right now.

_{Additional Note:}

_{The shoving ranges in this article, while available in many forms on different poker resources, were specifically taken from SnapShove. Check out SnapShove for more information about preflop shoving and calling strategy.}

Knowing what beats what in poker or Texas Hold’em is an important early step in learning the game. To help you out, I have provided for you an attractive printable or downloadable “cheat sheet” for both 5 card hand rankings as well as top 24 pre-flop starting hands.

Poker hands ranked from best to worst:

1. Royal Flush
2. Straight Flush
3. Four of a Kind
4. Full House
5. Flush
6. Straight
7. Three of a Kind
8. Two Pair
9. One Pair
10. High Card

To make things easier on you, I have included some handy charts that can be used to reference during play or even printed out.

Poker Hand Rankings Chart

Never forget what beats what again. Feel free to save this to your phone/tablet/computer or print the chart out.

Click below to download a high-quality PDF that includes a printable copy of both the showdown and pre-flop hand rankings.

The Top 24 Hold’Em Starting Hand Rankings

To help you out, I have also included the top 24 no-limit hold’em starting hands to give you a further idea of what beats what in poker. I based this list on both raw equities as well as post-flop playability.

I have used over 10 years of experience in both tournaments and cash games to compile this info. You get to benefit from my hard work!

How These Hands Were Determined

I took a look at a few of the pre-flop hand ranking charts out there and, while most appeared to get it right for the most part, there seemed to be something off.

The thing is, everyone always does pretty well on the top 5 or 6 hands. However, after that things get a bit murkier.

So, what really matters when it comes to weighing hand strength? I decided to take a close look at the problem. Using the knowledge I’ve gained over the past few years, I tried to come up with a better way of codifying hand rankings.

Determining the Overall Playability of Each Hand

I decided to go about it from a logical standpoint. When deciding whether to play a hand or not, what are the factors a strong player considers before acting?

So, I decided that there are basically two main factors to consider in determining the strength of a particular pre-flop hand. And, since equity is the tool we use to rank the value of hands I just had to figure out what type of equities matter most and then apply it to each factor.

Once I was able to define which equities to consider, it just took a bit of math.

1. Pre-Flop Equity

The first equity I decided to factor in is a hand’s raw pre-flop equity. I mean, sometimes you need to get all-in before the flop, right?

Of course, some hands will get all-in more frequently than others but for the sake of simplicity, raw equity against a strong range will give us a decent enough metric to come up with a comparative ranking.

2. Post-Flop Equity

Secondly, we need to factor in how a hand does post-flop. There’s no doubt, that certain hands play much better after the flop than others.

To calculate how well a hand does after the flop I looked at what post-flop hands tend to get all-in most of the time in a post-flop scenario. This includes the strongest made hands, including top pair and better, as well as strong draws.

Once I was able to figure out what hands are likely to get all-in, I just had to figure out the equity of every hand versus that range on a random flop.

Compiling the Final List

Doing these kinds of calculations by hand would be extremely difficult and time-consuming. Luckily, there is a software program called Cardrunner’s EV that does the math for me.

After I figured out both the raw pre-flop equity and the likely flop equity of each hand, I just used excel to average them. That data was used to compile the rankings.

Here are the final equity percentages:

Which Poker Starting Hand Ranges Should I Use?

Knowing which hands to open raise is important to your success. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.

Free Basic Poker Strategy Charts

I have built charts that provide you profitable opening ranges from every position. As a bonus, the charts also include what to do at every decision point possible for playing a 20 to 40 big blind stack.

Just provide the following info, subscribe to my spam-free newsletter, and I will email you the charts along with the comprehensive 10-page strategy guide for free!

Poker Hand Rankings Texas Holdem Starting Hands Chartting Hands Chart

The guide will give you an excellent starting point for playing No-Limit Texas Hold’em and will get you off on the right foot by allowing you to play fundamentally sound poker right now!

FAQ

What if my opponent and I have the same hand at showdown?

If more than one player has the same hand then you have to follow the tie-breaker rules to determine the winner.

If two or more players have a flush or straight

In the case where two players have a flush or straight, the person who has the highest card in their hand wins. For example, T9876 beats 76543.

If two or more players have a full house

In the case of multiple full houses, the player with the highest “trips” as part of their full house wins. For example, TTT22 beats 555AA.

What if two or more players have the same pair or two pair?

If multiple players have exactly the same two pair, the highest kicker is used to determine the winner. For example, JJ66Q beats JJ66T.

The same process is used for one-pair. The next highest kicker is used. If that is the same, you use the next highest kicker. So on and so forth until the tie is broken. For example, AAK85 beats AAK84.

Who wins if more than one person has the same high card?

Similarly to one pair and two-pair hands, you use the next highest kicker to determine the winner. You keep moving on to the next kicker until a winner is determined. For example, KT763 beats KT753.

Texas Holdem Hand Strength Chart

Which is better, trips or two-pair?

Three of a kind beats two-pair. It also beats a pair and high card.

Which is better, a flush or a straight?

Holdem Starting Hands Chart

A flush beats a straight. It also beats three of a kind, two pair, a pair, and high card.

What is the worst hand in poker?

The worst hand against multiple players is 72 offsuit. The worst hand heads-up is 32o.

What are the odds of getting a Royal Flush in Texas Hold’em?

A royal flush is extremely rare. You can only expect to get a royal flush once every 650,000 hands. That doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed. Personally, I have played well over 5 million hands and have only had one royal using both cards.

Final Thoughts

I hope this article has helped you learn more about how hand rankings work in poker. If you want to learn about basic poker strategy, be sure to check out my detailed no-limit hold’em basic tutorial.