Poker starting hands chart

The best starting hands, ranked

How good a hand is depends on how many players it has to beat, so there are two lists worth knowing. Heads-up, pairs dominate: even pocket eights (69.0%) beat ace-king suited (67.1%), because a single random hand usually misses the flop. Against eight opponents, somebody will pair up, so high suited cards that make the best flush or straight move ahead of middle pairs.

“Fair share” is what an average hand wins: half the pot heads-up, one ninth against eight opponents. Pocket aces win 85.4% against one hand and 34.4% against eight — less often, but 3.1 times their fair share, the biggest edge on the chart.

What the percentages mean

The number on each hand is its equity: the share of the pot it wins, on average, if every player stays in until the showdown (a split pot counts as a share). It is the cleanest measure of raw card strength, but it ignores betting — real hands fold, bluff and get paid off — so treat it as the starting point for decisions, not the whole story.

The 169 hands are not dealt equally often. A pocket pair can be made 6 ways, a suited hand 4 ways and an offsuit hand 12 ways, out of 1,326 possible two-card combinations:

So any one pair, like pocket aces, arrives 6 times in 1,326 deals — 1 in 221 — and ace-king in any suits 16 times, or about 1 in 83. For every exact dealing and flop probability, see the poker odds chart.

How hand value changes with table size

Adding opponents lowers every hand’s equity, but not evenly. Hands that win big pots by making strong hands — suited connectors, suited aces — lose less than hands that win by staying ahead unimproved, like small pairs and offsuit aces. The chart divides each hand’s equity by its fair share, so 1× is an average hand at that table size.

Pocket aces gain the most relative ground: the more opponents, the more likely one of them holds a hand aces crush. Seven-six suited starts below average heads-up (0.91×) and ends above it against eight (1.19×), passing pocket twos along the way. Here is how far some hands move in the ranking of all 169:

The lesson for a home game: in pots with many players, suited and connected hands deserve more respect and weak offsuit aces less. Ace-deuce offsuit looks strong heads-up (rank 60) and is a trap at a full table (rank 109) — when it pairs its ace, a better kicker is often out there.

Suited vs offsuit: what the suit is worth

Being suited adds a flush draw to every flop where two of your suit appear. Averaged over all 78 suited hands and their offsuit twins, the suit adds 2.8 points of equity against one opponent and 3.9 points against eight — a 6% boost heads-up, but 45% at a full table, where flushes win many of the big pots.

Don’t overrate it, though. Suitedness can tip a borderline hand into a playable one, but it doesn’t rescue a bad one: seven-deuce suited still ranks 124 of 169 against eight opponents.

A baseline opening range by seat

The later you act, the fewer players are left behind you to wake up with a big hand — and the more often you get to act last after the flop. So opening ranges widen from the first seat to the button. Pick a seat to see a simple baseline for raising first into an unopened pot at a nine-player table:

Read it as a starting point with known blind spots. Ranking by raw equity undervalues small pairs and suited connectors, which win big pots when they hit a set or a straight, so many players add them from later seats. It also overvalues weak offsuit aces, which often lose to a better ace. With fewer players the early seats simply disappear: at six players the first to act opens like the LJ row, and heads-up the button raises far more than any row here — see heads-up poker and poker positions.

Practice your preflop decisions

Charts stick when you use them. On FizzPoker you can deal a free table for friends or one bot, or sign in (free) to fill it with bots at five levels and practice opening from every seat. After the game, the Fizz Score reviews the decisions you made — preflop included — against game-theory models and labels each graded one acceptable, inaccuracy, mistake or blunder, as an advisory second opinion. How game theory changes preflop play.

To see whether you actually play like the chart, open the Stats tab on your account: it shows your VPIP (how often you put chips in voluntarily) and PFR (how often you raise preflop) from your own FizzPoker games, broken down by position — a quick check that you open tighter under the gun than on the button. Want to test your preflop and postflop judgment first? Take the poker test: twelve graded Hold’em decisions.

Questions people ask

Keep going

• PositionsEvery seat name and acting order, 2–9 players.
• Equity vs rangeYour hand against a painted 13×13 range.
• Heads-up pokerTwo-player rules, blinds and a hand-strength chart.
• Cheat sheetRankings, odds and positions on one printable page.