4/12/2022

Top 10 Worst Starting Hands In Texas Holdem

Top 10 Worst Starting Hands In Texas Holdem 4,1/5 1623 votes

At the bottom of this page is a comprehensive listing of Texas Hold'em starting hands based on their EV (expected value). Expected value is the average number of big blinds this hand will make or lose. For example: AA from the Small Blind in a $3/$6 game will make, on average, 2.71 times the big. The strategy of what to hold, and why, takes a bit to master, so studying the worst starting hands in Texas Hold'em, even more, can help you improve your game. Beginner's Advice Play only the cards in the 10-best list and always fold those in the worst hands list. Texas Holdem Rankings for All 169 Starting Hands. Ever since the early days of Texas holdem poker, players have attempted to analyze and organize the 169 possible two card starting hands found in the game. Top 10 Worst Starting Hands In Texas Holdem, niagara falls canada casino sports betting, give me blackjack, slot zakelijke brief engels. A 2-7 offsuit hand is the worst hand to start with in Texas Hold 'Em poker because there are so few good options available to you: you have no straight draw, no flush draw, and even if you wind up with a pair of 7s or a pair of 2s, you're unlikely to have the best hand. Of course, you'll see some crazy flops every now and then, but just because.


In the first part of the article we looked at Six plus Hand Rankings, where it became clear that the 16 cards missing from the deck in this variant leads to a slight, but important, changes in how strong the starting hands are which we will receive.

Let’s take a look at this in some more details, and work out how this affects the strategy of our game.
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Pocket Aces

Worst Starting Hands In Texas Holdem

If we look at traditional Texas Hold’em starting hands, we would expect to get our beloved AA about once every 221 hands, so what about in our new version of the game?

Well, without troubling you with the maths (I CAN do it, honestly!) the answer is you’ll get your pocket rockets once every 105 hands, which is more than twice as often as in Texas Hold’em!

Naturally, what goes for aces also goes for the other pairs – you’ll have a pocket pair more than twice as regularly in Six plus Hold’em (as will your opponent! Don’t forget this important consideration).

Are there any other changes we need to know about regarding starting hands?

Well, let’s take a look at a few examples and see how they compare to normal Texas Hold’em…


Let's Say We have JJ

A naturally tricky starting hand in Texas Hold’em, but one we would probably open-raise with pre-flop. How does it fare in Six Plus?

We need to realize that instead of beating nine other pairs pre-flop, now it is only a favorite against 5, and still a dog to QQ, KK and AA. So it is not as strong in this respect.

However, because 3 of a kind now beats a straight in Six Plus, flopping a set becomes very strong against many hands – flushesare harder to come by, as we saw previously, because there are only nine cards of any single suit available in the deck.

So, how often will our smaller pairs flop a set? In Texas Hold’em it’s about 11.8% or roughly one time in eight. In Six Plus, we will do the maths quickly (just to prove I can!)

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There are 36 cards in the pack, we have – let’s say again – JJ in our hand. So there are two jacks left in the 34 remaining cards.

The flop probabilities work out at 2/34 + 2/33 + 2/32 = 0.18, so basically one time in five when we have a pocket pair we will improve to a set on the flop. Not too shabby!


What About the Hated 72 Offsuit?

In traditional Texas Hold’em this is the worst starting hand, and almost completely unplayable. Well, as you can probably work out yourself quite easily, in Six Plus the equivalent hand is J 6 offsuit, which, let’s be honest, would rarely be played even in our normal game!

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Top 10 Worst Starting Hands In Texas Holdemas Hold Em

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Top 10 Worst Starting Hands In Texas Holdem

Playing AK Becomes an 'Interesting' Problem

We know how difficult it can be to play this hand in Texas Hold’em, both pre-flop and post-flop, so how about in Six Plus?

Well, first off, we will be dealt AK about 2.5% of our hands – which is quite a lot of the time, maybe once every five or six rounds at a full ring table, so it’s important enough to learn its worth in Six Plus Hold’em.

If we accept that suited versions become a lot more valuable - flushes beat full houses in our new version - then it can also make sense to play AKs slower than usual. Mixing our game up with AKs hides our play better, while AKo is still a very strong hand which we can 3-bet and even consider stacking off with.


Small Pairs

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Of course 66 now becomes the smallest pocket pair. In Texas Hold’em we could consider calling pre-flop raises with this hand if the price was right – flopping a set and cracking a higher pair is our main goal – but now we have to consider that we are essentially playing 22 in a game where set-over-set sees our 6’s screwed, although on the plus side they do now beat straights!

Relative Hand Values

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We need to be aware that these change a fair bit from Texas Hold’em, since stronger hands in general are being played across the board. Top pair, top kicker is nowhere near as strong – in fact it is very unlikely to win on its own as a best hand at showdown in 6-max or full-ring when we play Six Plus Hold’em.

There is also the ‘alternative river version’ of the game to consider, when receiving an extra hole card means that hand strengths can become stronger still.

Best and worst starting hands in texas holdem

So, in general two pair would be a median winning hand at full-ring – a useful thing to know when planning your hand strategy!


We will look at the change in Pot Odds in part 3, but a casual glance at things like ‘drawing hands’ shows that we are more likely to his many of them, as we have fewer cards left containing the same number of outs. For example, a gutshot – where any of four cards hits for us – now gives us 4/31 chances to hit after the flop, as opposed to 4/47 in Texas Hold’em – a significant difference indeed!

So, we’ve now seen the basics of the game – Hand Rankings, how starting hands differ – and next up are the ‘Pot Odds’ calculations, which will affect our strategy considerably…
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