1. Texas Holdem Hand Rankings Preflop
2. Texas Holdem Odds Before Flop
3. Texas Holdem Preflop Odds Calculator
4. Texas Hold'em Pre Flop Odds
5. Texas Holdem Preflop Odds
6. Texas Holdem Odds Chart Preflop
7. Texas Holdem Probability Chart

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Playing Before The Flop. Betting Rounds: Before The Flop: Flop: Flop Hands: Turn: River Before the flop is where it all starts; you are dealt your cards and you are able to make your first decision in the hand. Preflop play is not as complex as other betting rounds due to. The odds in this Texas Hold'em odds table are unlikely to directly help your overall strategy.

As a poker beginner, you might be already envisioning the money made when you look down at your cards and see pocket aces. While it is true that AA will win more often than not, you still need to understand you will not win every time. So how often can you expect to win with aces?

Pocket aces win 85% of the time against one opponent holding the random hand in Texas Holdem. Although the percentage varies greatly depending on the opponent’s hand and the number of opponents. 85% is the odds to win when AA goes all-in preflop. Odds change on later streets.

If you're drawing to a flush, you have two suited cards in your hand and two on the board, that means 9 cards of that suit left in the deck. On the flop, it's 9.4 (+4) = roughly 40% of hitting. Meanwhile, on the turn (so the odds of hitting on the river) is 9.2 (=2) = roughly 20% of hitting.

It might feel unfair when we loose holding the best hand but keep in mind if we are not 100% to win, we will lose sometimes.

Chances of winning with pocket aces preflop

Every time you get dealt a hand in Texas Holdem your odds of getting pocket aces are 1/221, which is roughly 0.9%.

First, let’s check how often do pocket aces win preflop. For better representation, I will take a sample of 100 examples. So next 100 times you receive an AA, 15 times you will lose and win 85 times.

We should not forget about variance. If we experience negative variance (if we are unlucky), then we may lose 30 times and win 70 times only. On the other hand, if we get a positive side of variance (if we are lucky), we could win 95 out of 100 times!

Pocket aces odds for winning when all-in preflop change depending on which hand we are up against. See how well does AA against specific hands in terms of poker percentages (chance to win). For new players to poker, let me elaborate on the table below.

• 72o means any combination of 7 and 2, o after means the hand is off-suit (meaning that suits on 7 and 2 don’t match)
• 22+ means any pocket pair of 2 and higher (which is all pocket pairs from 22 to and including AA)
• T+ means any card T and higher (T, J, Q, K, A)
• JTs stands for JT suites, which means that suits of J and T match
• broadway hands are the hands that include any combination of hands where the lowest card is T or higher (TQ, TJ, AA, KK, TT, AT)

The best hand against aces preflop is 76s or 87s. They both win 22.5% of the time, so still a big underdog, but it is the best you can hope for.

How odds change against more players

The odds of winning reduce if more players are involved in the hand. Against two opponents holding random hands, AA wins 73.5% of the time. Against three, the odds of winning are now merely 64%.

The tool I am using to show you the % is called Equilab. And you can download it for free from Pokerstrategy’s website. Click on Poker Tools in the menu, the software and scroll down to the end where it says Free training software. Make sure you download the one for Hold’em (it’s written only Equilab).

Chances of winning with AA on later streets

In poker, there is more than just preflop. We know four streets. Those are preflop, flop, turn, and river. It’s easy to calculate your odds to win preflop. When it comes to postflop, things start to get more complex. There are many possible flops. In fact 22100 possible flops. Now some of those could be grouped, but that would still leave us with 1755 different scenarios of flops. On turn and river, that number only increases.

So I can’t show you the pocket aces win percentage against those. But I encourage you to download yourself Equilab I linked to above and play around with different flops, turns, and rivers. As a general rule of thumb, more players, the more cautious you need to be. It will be more likely at least one player has something good.

Chances of winning pre-flop with other hands

Pocket aces are the strongest hand in poker. But we shouldn’t ignore others. The second strongest hand in Hold’em are pocket kings followed by pocket queens.

Chances to win with pocket kings

From the table, we can notice that equity (% to win) with KK against random hand preflop is a bit different for some cards and pretty much the same for others. The biggest difference comes from broadway hands and 22+. The difference is because 22+ and broadways also include AA and that crushes us (AA is 82% to win against KK).

KK has 78.5% chance to win preflop against a random hand. So if our opponent holds a random hand they will still win roughly 1 out of five times. 21.5% of the time to be exact.

Important note. In scenarios above for AA and KK, where I compared them to random holding, I assumed the opponent has a random hand he is willing to go all-in with preflop. In real poker games, opponents will not be going all-in with random hands.

Lets now check the case for QQ

Same as for KK our equity with QQ now falls lower, when we are up against broadway hands and pocket pairs.

Lastly let’s check how we do against those hands with AK as many players like to overplay AK.

Many beginner players are shocked when they see how poorly AK does. That’swhere seasoned poker players will make a lot of money from beginners. Any experienced player knows newbie often overplays hands that look nice but don’t do that good against stronger holdings. With QQ our equity was a lot higher for all of the scenarios. Even against the worst combination of 72o, AK is supposed to win only 2 out of 3 times. This means you will lose 32 times and win 62 times. And that is if you run just average. And this if there would be no variance involved.

I will go deeper into the strategy in another article as it is a massive topic on its own. For now, know when the opponent goes all-in preflop, he will have a decent hand unless they are aggressive players willing to bluff their stack. While some players play tighter (they don’t play many hands) than others a good rule of thumb is pocket kings and aces are always strong enough to get all the money in the middle preflop. With QQ we should be good against the majority, but the tightest people. When it comes to AK, it depends on the opponent we are up against. Often it comes down to personal playing style. I prefer to play my AK a bit more passively, and I will not be blindly throwing my stack in the middle to gamble for what is around 50% to win against what opponent wants to go with all-in.

Conclusion

Texas Holdem Hand Rankings Preflop

While pocket aces are a definite favorite against any other hand preflop, it doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to win. Odds change significantly if more players are involved, but at the end of the day, if we get all the money in preflop, we should be happy. In the worst-case scenario, we will have 77.5% to win. When we have either KK or QQ we should still do good. But with AK we need to start being cautiouspreflop.

Related Links

• Ace King vs Pocket Jacks: Winrate and Examples
  
• Odds of Winning With Pocket Kings: Including the Winrate
  

Texas Holdem Odds Before Flop

Betting Rounds: Before The Flop : Flop : Flop Hands : Turn : River

Texas Holdem Preflop Odds Calculator

Before the flop is where it all starts; you are dealt your cards and you are able to make your first decision in the hand.

Preflop play is not as complex as other betting rounds due to the fact that the hand is in its very early stages. The majority of your strategy simply involves choosing your hands carefully and betting the right amount of chips.

Texas Hold'em Pre Flop Odds

Starting hand selection.

Good preflop strategy involves choosing the right cards to fight with and having a good starting hand strategy. Just as you wouldn't send your weakest friend into battle, you don't want to rest your hopes on hands that have very little strength and are likely to get a good hiding from your opponents.

If you have the best hand or one of the best hands every time you enter a pot, you are dramatically increasing your chances of winning money from each and every hand.

The best starting hands are the big pairs and big cards. You should try and stick with big cards like Aces, Kings, Queens and Jacks as much as possible, and avoid hands that do not have any of these cards in them. Do not fall into the trap of playing any two cards because you had a 'feeling' that they would do well. If you want to win money, you should fold the cards that are likely to get you into trouble and cost you money.

Betting before the flop.

If you have a strong hand and you want to enter the pot, you should almost always make a raise. If you simply call the big blind, you are giving weaker players the opportunity to see a cheap flop and outdraw you, when it will be better to reduce the number of players who see a flop by making a decent-sized raise. So the next time you want to play with your strong hand, aim to weed out the weaker players and make a good raise.

Bet sizing guidelines.

As far as bet sizing goes, your standard preflop raise should be around 4x the big blind. If you just double the big blind and make that minimum raise, you are not betting enough money to scare other players out of the pot.

With a minimum raise, you will find that a large number of weaker players will still come along for the ride and your raise will not be respected, leaving you open to being outdrawn when the cards come down. Make sure that your preflop raises are strong and are able to sort the men from the boys.

The ideal situation is to be going to the flop heads up with a strong hand. If you are in position too, all the better.

If there has been a raise before you and you have a strong hand, your main plan of action should be to just call if your hand is strong (but not amazing, e.g. AQ, AJ, KQ, JJ), or reraise if you have a very strong hand like AA, KK, QQ or possibly AK. Preflop bet sizing is all part of a good poker betting strategy.

Preflop position.

Your position at the table is going to play an incredibly important role in every hand that you play. As you should know, being able to act after your opponents will prove to be very valuable, and can easily make the difference between winning and losing a hand.

The best position in every hand is going to be the player that is on the button, as this person is going to be acting last on every round in the hand. Seats to the right of the button are also quite favorable, as they will also be one of the last players to be acting on each betting round in the hand.

You can loosen your starting hand requirements a little in late position, as your position is going to give you a big advantage over the other players at the table.

The least favorable positions are going to be the small and big blind, and the first few seats to the left of the big blind. These players will be one of the first to act on each round, which can make playing a hand very difficult. Therefore you should stick to playing only the strongest starting hands from these seats, as your position is going to be a severe handicap that can make marginally-strong hands quite unprofitable.

Before the flop strategy tips.

• Limping is rarely a good play. Always look to either 'pump it' or 'dump it'.
• Raise more if there are limpers before you. Add 1BB to your 4BB raise for each limper.
• If you consistently have lots of players calling your raise preflop, try raising more.
• You can loosen your starting hand requirements at short-handed tables.
• Just because you raise preflop, it doesn't mean that you are committed to the hand.

How to play before the flop overview.

If you always start out with a strong hand, you have a much greater chance of winning money from poker. There is no doubt that it is going to be more fun to play every hand under the sun in the hope of catching a big hand and cashing in, but this is just going to lose you money in the long run. Don't fool yourself into thinking that limping saves you money, because it is just a weak play that will consistently drain your bankroll through every session, so don't do it.

The key to good preflop play is to be selectively aggressive, with there being very little in the middle - you should either always be raising or folding. This makes things a lot easier if you are a new player because you have limited yourself to 2 simple (and profitable) options rather than getting confused with whether it is worth limping-in.

Playing a hand.

Texas Holdem Preflop Odds

Go back to the sublime Texas Hold'em guide.

Texas Holdem Odds Chart Preflop

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Texas Holdem Probability Chart

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