Texas Holdem Hands Strongest To Weakest

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Aug 13, 2019  Here you'll find a list of poker hands from highest to lowest to help you get started, as well as the top starting hands for Texas Hold'em. This cheat sheet displays the traditional poker hand rankings, which are used in the most popular variants of poker (such as Texas Hold‘em).

Texas hold ’em is a variation of the card game of poker. Two cards, known as the hole cards or hold cards, are dealt face down to each player, and then five community cards are dealt face up in three stages. The stages consist of a series of three cards “the flop”, later an additional single card “the turn” or “fourth street” and a final card “the river” or “fifth street”. Each player seeks the best five card poker hand from the combination of the community cards and their own hole cards. If a player’s best five card poker hand consists only of the five community cards and none of the player’s hole cards, it is called “playing the board”. Players have betting options to check, call, raise or fold. Rounds of betting take place before the flop is dealt, and after each subsequent deal.

  1. Oct 01, 2007  Win at Poker Using Card Counting Techniques: Basic Poker Hands Rankings From Strongest to Weakest. Win Texas Hold'em Poker Tournaments Everytime Using This - Duration. Holdem starting.
  2. Trouble starting hands for novice players are A-2, A-3, A-4, A-5, A-6, A-7, A-8, and A-9. If another opponent also has an ace with a better kicker, than you only have 3 outs to make a better online pokerhand. Pocket aces, the strongest starting hand in Texas Hold’em poker. A pocket pair of kings.

Before playing it is important to understand the game and how the cards are used in Texas Holdem from the value of suits and ranks to how they’re used during actual gameplay. In order to understand how the cards work in Texas Holdem, the first step is to be aware of what suits and ranks are.

The symbols in the corners of a card mark its suit. There are four suits in a standard American deck of cards and these include:

  • Clubs – Black symbol that looks similar to a cloverleaf.
  • Spades – The black symbol that doesn’t resemble a cloverleaf. Looks like a digging implement.
  • Hearts – Red symbol that looks like a heart.
  • Diamonds – Red symbols that resemble diamonds.

While the suit places the card into one of four categories, the rank determines its value within that category. The ace can serve as the highest or lowest card in a rank, but the other rankings remain the same. They are (from highest to lowest): King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2.

Hand Rankings in Texas Hold’em

If a game of Texas Hold’em results in a showdown, the winner is determined by comparing the cards of each remaining player. The participant with the strongest hand takes the pot. The following are all the available hands in order from strongest to weakest.

Straight Flush – Five cards of the same suit in sequence. The highest poker hand is the royal flush, which has an ace high followed by a king, queen, jack , and 10 (all of the same suit). Aces can also be used as low cards. In the rare case that multiple players have a straight flush, the winning hand is the one with the highest card. The chance of getting a straight flush during a game of Texas Hold’em is 0.0311%.

Four of a Kind – A hand containing four cards of one rank, as well as one unmatched card. Since Texas Hold’em uses community cards, it’s possible for more than one player to wind up with the same set of four. In this case, the winning hand is the one with the higher unmatched card. The odds of getting four of a kind (also known as “quads”) in a game of seven-card poker are 0.168%.

Full House – Also known as a “full boat,” this hand contains three matching cards of one rank and two matching cards of another rank. The three matching cards are meant to break ties, but the pairs can also be consulted if players have identical three-card sets. The probability of getting a full house in a game of seven-card poker is 2.60%.

Flush – Five cards of the same suit that are not in sequence. In the case of a tie, each card is compared (starting with the highest one) to find the player with the superior hand. A player can expect to get a flush 3.03% of the time when playing Texas Hold’em.

Straight – A five-card hand that’s in sequential order but is made up of at least two different suits. If two players have a straight, the highest card of each hand is compared to determine a winner. The chances of getting a straight during a game are 4.62%.

Three of a Kind – Also known as a “set” or “trips,” this five-card poker hand is comprised of three cards of the same rank, as well as two other unrelated cards. If two players have the same set of trips during the showdown phase, then the higher of the two unrelated cards are compared to determine a winner. Players can expect to achieve this hand 4.83% of the time during games of Texas Hold’em.

Two Pair – This hand is made up of two cards of the same rank, two cards of another matching rank, and another card of a third rank. The highest ranking pair is compared to break ties, and the second pair is consulted if these are the same. In the rare case that both sets of pairs are the same, then the hand with the highest fifth card is declared the winner. The player receives this hand 23.5% of the time.

One Pair – Contains two cards of an identical rank, as well as three other cards of different but non-matching ranks. If two players each have a pair, then the highest pair wins. In the case of a tie, the other cards are compared in descending order. In Texas Hold’em, the chance of getting a pair is 43.8%.

High Card – This hand has no matching ranks, and its value is determined by the highest card present. The probability of ending up with one of these hands is 17.4%, which means players have a better percentage chance of receiving a one or two-pair hand.

Dealing the Cards in Hold’em

If you’re learning about how the cards work in Texas Hold’em, you’ll need to be familiar with the order in which they’re dealt. No matter where you play, the following order will always be adhered to:

  1. The game begins with each player receiving two cards face down (known as hole or pocket cards). The player in the small blind receives the first card dealt, while the player with the dealer button gets the last card.
  2. If two or more players remain after the pre-flop betting round, then three community cards known as the “flop” are dealt face-up in the center of the table. Players may use their two hole cards and the community cards to make the best five-card hand possible.
  3. After another round of betting, a fourth community card known as the “turn” is dealt.
  4. Another round of betting occurs, and a final community card known as the “river” is dealt in the center of the playing surface.
  5. No more cards are dealt from this point on. One more round of betting takes place, and a showdown then occurs if two or more players remain in the pot.

Texas Holdem Hands Strongest To Weakest Person


Introduction to Ultimate Texas Hold’em

The strategy involved in table games is something that attracts a whole lot of players. With Ultimate Texas Hold’em, it’s really the whole point of playing the game because it’s a title with a particularly deep level of strategy involved. In fact, it may be the most strategic of all of the casino poker genre.

With that having been said, players shouldn’t be intimidated by it, especially if they have interest in poker. A common complaint of many poker fans is that casino poker games don’t offer enough depth of strategy, and if you’re one of the people who thinks that, then Ultimate Texas Hold’em is definitely a game that will likely appeal to you because it’s almost as if it’s designed to address that specific criticism.

The History of Ultimate Texas Hold’em

Ultimate Texas Hold’em was developed as a game by Shuffle Master, which later became known as Bally Gaming, one of the most popular casino gaming companies in the world. Roger Snow was the man who invented it there, and when it was first introduced, it was only available at video terminals that could “deal” out to several players at once.

One of the reasons for the video terminal approach being used is that it’s a pretty complicated game that was thought to be too experimental and too in-depth to teach to dealers. The amount that would of been spent training dealers is a factor whenever introducing a new game like this, etc. However, it eventually got pretty popular, and a lot of land-based casinos turned it into a table game along these lines.

Texas Holdem Hands Strongest To Weakest Season

While this game is considered the intellectual property of Bally, that doesn’t mean that most software providers have permission to use it. However, that doesn’t really stop them, and it’s not on the players to police that type of thing (not that they could if they wanted to). As such, feel free to play away as usual.

Rules and Gameplay

Learning how the gameplay procedure works for Ultimate Texas Hold’em games online can be tricky at first because there’s more to it than other casino poker titles. However, we think the easiest way to learn to play is to read over the rules a couple of times and then try a short session at a free play demo version of the game. If you do that, we think you’ll be able to pick up the flow of the gameplay pretty quickly.

Poker Hand Rankings

Because this is a fairly advanced style of casino poker, we’re going to assume that players go into this title knowing the order of the five-card poker hand rankings. However, we’ll offer a quick refresher here with the poker hands listed from strongest to weakest:

  • Royal Flush – Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten of a matching suit
  • Straight Flush – Five other consecutive cards (other than the combination AKQJT) in a matching suit
  • Four of a Kind – Four cards that all have the same rank
  • Full House – Three cards that all have the same rank with two more cards of a different matching rank
  • Flush – Five cards, not consecutive, but that all have a matching suit
  • Straight – Five consecutive cards but that do not have matching suits
  • Three of a King – Three cards that all have the same rank
  • Two Pair – Two cards with a matching rank along with two cards of a different matching rank
  • One Pair – Two cards with a matching rank
  • High Card – No made hand listed above; five unrelated cards

Since this is a Texas hold’em style of game as well, your five-card hand is determined by picking out the five cards from the seven available to you (two holes cards plus five community cards) to make the best possible poker hand from the listing above.

Ultimate Texas Hold’em Play Procedure

Texas Holdem Hands Chart

The following procedure is for the main ante and blind bets. All side bets, including the trips bet, will be discussed in another section below.

  1. The player starts by putting bets of equal size on the ante and blind spots on the table.
  2. The player and dealer are then dealt two cards each, face-down, and these are the hole cards. At this point, the player can make a play bet of 4x the ante amount. If so, the rest of the cards are dealt, and the hands go to a showdown.
  3. If the player elects to check, no more bets are added for that point in time. The first three community cards are dealt (referred to as the flop), and the player gets the option to make a play bet of 2x the ante amount. If so, the rest of the cards are dealt, and the hands go to a showdown.
  4. If the player elects to check again, no more bets are added for that point in the hand. The final two community cards are dealt (referred to as the turn and river, individually), and the player has the option to make a play bet that’s the same size as the ante, which is referred to as a call at this point, and go to a showdown. Alternatively, the player can fold and give up the ante bet, the blind bet and any chance of winning the hand.
  5. If you get to a showdown, then first it has to be determined if the player opens. This is similar to the idea of qualifying. The dealer opens by having at least a pair, but this can be a pair that’s on the board, so it’s pretty common for the dealer to open.
  6. A combination of whether the dealer opens and if the player’s best five-card hand beats the dealer’s best five-card hand determines the payouts.

There are three bets that have to be reconciled: the blind, the ante and the play bet. The easy way to remember how these work is that the ante bet always pushes if the dealer doesn’t open (aka if the dealer doesn’t qualify), and it wins/loses if the dealer does open. Otherwise, all three bets will win or lose based on which of the two hands is the best. Note that if there’s a tie, then all three bets push no matter if the dealer opens or not.

Texas Holdem Hands Strongest To Weakest Heart

The Values of Winning Bets

With three different wagers in play with each Ultimate Texas Hold’em hand, it’s critical to know how each of the three is paid out because it’s easy to get mixed up. The ante bet is the easiest to know because it always pays at 1:1 when it’s not a push. However, the play bet is slightly more complicated since it pays at 1:1, but the value can be anywhere from one to four times the value of the ante depending on when you put in your raise or call.

For the blind bet, however, this wager’s value is completely based on the end result of your five-card hand. Generally speaking, you need at least a straight for it to pay out, and all hands three of a kind or lower turn this wager into a push regardless of who won the hand. With that said, here’s the most common pay table for the blind bet:

  • Royal Flush – 500x
  • Straight Flush – 50x
  • Four of a Kind – 10x
  • Full House – 3x
  • Flush – 1.5x*
  • Straight – 1x
  • Three of a Kind or lower – Push

* Because of the 1.5x payout here, it’s best to play with wagers that are of even amounts of the smallest denominations used in the game. Otherwise, your payout will get rounded down, and you’ll lose a small amount of value each time you’re given a flush.

Strongest

Each of the three bets of the main game are evaluated in different ways, but it’s not to hard to keep up with them once you’ve seen a few sessions.

Trips Bet and Payouts

There’s an optional side bet that’s usually posted up beside of the blind and ante spots on the Ultimate Texas Hold’em tables that’s called the trips bet. This bet is not affected by whether you win or lose the hand. Instead, it’s generally seen as just a standard side bet where the payouts are determined by your final five-card hand. It wins for three of a kind or better, which is why it’s called the trips bet.

You’ll find a number of different pay tables for the trips bet, but most of them pay 50x for a royal, 40x for a straight flush and 30x for four of a kind. From there, there can be a lot of variation, and there is no real standardized option. Bally Gaming actually lists out four different pay tables with house edges ranging from 0.9 percent to 6.2 percent, but there are plenty of other distributions available online. This means that the house edge for this side bet will just depending on where you’re playing.

Ultimate Texas Hold’em Strategy

Strategy for this game is all about the ante and blind bets, and the side bet isn’t really all that important since it doesn’t require any strategic decisions. However, things are broken down for this game into three sets of decisions.

Texas Holdem Hands Strongest To Weakest Time

The first is for the pre-flop decision on whether or not you should make a play bet for 4x the size of your ante. If you decline that option, then you have the flop decision on if you should make the bet worth 2x the size of your ante. Finally, if you also decline that option, there is the situation on the river where you can either call for 1x the size of your ante or just fold. Each of these potential decisions is covered separately below.

The Pre-flop Decision

The decision to put in the big 4x raise before the flop depends entirely on the two cards in your hand. More specifically, it depends on the rank of those two cards and whether or not they are of the same suit. When they’re of the same suit, we call those hands “suited” for short, and when they’re not of the same suit, we call them “off-suit.”

The following is a breakdown of all of the situations where you should use the play bet pre-flop:

  • Always raise any pair hand of 33 or higher (check with 22).
  • Any hand with an ace gets a pre-flop raise.
  • Any hand with a king gets a pre-flop except for off-suit hands that have a two, three or four.
  • A queen with an eight or higher is always raised. You’ll also raise with queen-seven or queen-six if they are suited.
  • Jack-ten is always raised. Jack-nine and jack-eight are only raised if they’re suited.

That’s all there is to know for the pre-flop betting round.

The Flop Decision

When you play the flop decision, which is whether to raise with a play bet worth 2x the size of your ante, you only have three cases to keep up with. That makes playing this betting round fairly easy, though you may want to make yourself a note card for reference when you first start out. Here are the three flop raising cases to remember in Ultimate Texas Hold’em:

  • If you have a made hand of two pair or better, you always raise.
  • If you have a pair that includes at least one card in your hole cards, then raise as long as they’re threes or higher.
  • If you have four cards to a flush draw with a hole card for that draw that’s 10 or higher, then you should also raise.

Something worth pointing out here is that you aren’t often going to be raising with draws at all. In fact, you have to have a very strong hand to make that work in this game on any level.

The River Decision

Weakest

If you put in a check pre-flop and on the flop, you’re left with the river decision to either call for the play bet worth the same size of your ante or to fold and give up your bets and chances of winning. However, the pre-flop and flop decisions are much easier to make than the river decision because you often have to do some counting.

Texas Holdem Hands Strongest To Weakest Man

If you have a pair or better that isn’t just two cards on the community board, then you always call. However, if you don’t have a pair and only have a high card hand, you’ll count the number of cards that the dealer can have that can beat you. If that number is 20 or lower, then you call. If it’s 21 or higher, then you go ahead and fold.

That might sound a little complicated at first, but after you try it a couple of times, it becomes pretty straightforward and is a simple fact of counting down the ranks. As a result of this rule, you’ll virtually always fold if there are four cards of a suit on the board and you do not have one of that suit in your hole cards. The reason for this is that there are already nine other cards the dealer can have to beat you with a flush, and that’s before you start counting pairs and other high cards that would give the dealer a better hand.

Starting Hands Texas Holdem

Live Dealer Ultimate Texas Hold’em

You can find a live dealer Ultimate Texas Hold’em game available at a variety of online casinos with the Evolution Gaming software. This is the most popular software for live dealer casinos out there, so it’s not very hard to find at all.

When you play this game in the live dealer format, you won’t get anything different than the bets we have outlined above. You’ll have the usual ante/blind bet to play, and you’ll also have the trips side bet available with a pretty standard pay table that isn’t all that interesting or different than how we described them up above.

What is different about playing in this environment is that you’ll be able to chat it up with your dealer and the other players at the table. Being able to chat with the other players means that you’ll be able to discuss strategy and how to play your hands, and that means there’s a lot of room for some interesting learning experiences. Players can try to figure out as a group how to play certain betting rounds, or you can just leave all of that to everyone else and play your own hands according to the proven strategies we’ve outlined above.

Overview

There’s no doubt that Ultimate Texas Hold’em is a more involved and more complicated game than most of the other casino poker titles. However, that gives it a unique flavor from a strategic standpoint, and that adds a lot to the live dealer style of play as well since it gives more topics of conversation for the chat.

We mentioned this above, but we want to make sure that new players know that even though this game does have a higher degree of complexity than most other table games, you should not be intimidated by it. It’s not an incredibly difficult game to learn by any means, and there’s always the ability to play at very low stakes to get used to the play style before you ramp things up.