Starting hands

There are 1,326 ways to be dealt two cards from a 52-card deck, but only 169 that play differently, because suits do not matter before the flop except for whether your two cards share one. A♥K♥ and A♣K♣ are the same hand: ace-king suited, written AKs.

The three kinds of starting hand

That last column explains a lot of poker. Offsuit hands make up 70% of everything you are dealt, which is why you will look down at unplayable offsuit junk most of the time.

How often you are dealt...

At a game dealing around 40 hands an hour, you will see pocket aces about once every five or six hours. Do not wait for them.

Groups worth knowing

Rather than memorising 169 hands, think in families:

• Premium pairs - AA, KK, QQ. Raise and re-raise. These are the hands you want all your chips in with before the flop.
• Big aces - AK, AQ. Strong, but they are not pairs: AK misses the flop about two times in three. Raise them; be careful when they only make one pair against heavy action.
• Middle pairs - JJ down to 77. Good hands that hate overcards. On a flop of A♥K♦4♣, your J♠J♣ is often second best.
• Small pairs - 66 down to 22. Playing to flop a set, which happens about one time in eight and a half (11.8%). Want cheap calls and deep stacks.
• Suited aces - A5s to A2s. Make nut flushes and wheel straights. Good hands to raise and to 3-bet as semi-bluffs.
• Broadway cards - KQ, KJ, QJ, JT. Make strong top pairs and straights. Much better suited than offsuit.
• Suited connectors - 98s, 87s, 76s. Straights and flushes. Best in position, with deep stacks, against players who pay off.
• Trash - K7o, Q4o, 93o and friends. Fold. When they hit, they make second-best hands.

Domination: why KJ is worse than it looks

A hand is dominated when an opponent holds one of your cards with a higher partner: your K♦J♥ against A♠K♣. You can still win by pairing the jack, but whenever you both pair the king, you lose. Dominated hands lose the most money, because they make hands that are good enough to call but not good enough to win.

This is why hands like KJo and QTo are folded from early position: the hands that call a raise from early position, like AK, KQ and AJ, dominate them.

Does suited matter?

Yes, but less than people think. Being suited adds roughly 2 to 3 percentage points of equity against a typical hand. That is enough to turn many borderline hands from a fold into a raise in late position, and not enough to make a bad hand good: 7♥2♥ is still a fold everywhere.

Turn this into a decision with the opening range charts.