The Odds-On Favourite - Part 2
As I said in the last post, there are a couple of key skills that you want to develop if you plan to be a Texas Hold’em tournament player. While being able to read your opponents is especially important in a physical game, it’s harder to use the skill online. However, understanding your odds is a skill that is important in both online and live forms of Texas Hold’em.
To be able to calculate your odds of winning, you need to the relative rank of various poker hands. Let’s start with a quick review. The following info is compiled from an info card from a deck of Bicycle brand playing cards.
- (1) Royal Flush - This is the highest hand, made up A, K, Q, J, and 10 from the same suit. The odds of getting this hand are 1/650,000.
- (2) Straigh Flush - 5 cards in order from the same suit. This is a lesser form of the Royal Flush. Odds: 1/65,000.
- (3) Four of a Kind - 1/4,000.
- (4) Full House - Three of a kind and a pair. 1/700.
- (5) Flush - Five cards of the same suit. 1/500.
- (6) Straight - The same as a straight flush, except the cards can be of different suits. 1/250.
- (7) Three of a Kind - 1/50.
- (8) Two Pair - 1/20.
- (9) One Pair - 3/7 (1 in 2 1/3).
- (10) No Pair Hands - anything else. Value is determined by highest card.
As you can see, the value of a hand goes up based on its rarity. However, in Texas Hold’em, everyone starts out with just two cards before the flop, so that changes the odds somewhat. So what you also need to learn is, given the two cards you are holding pre-flop, what are the odds of your winning the hand? To start with, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with the Top Ten Hands of Texas Hold’em (preflop). The following information is compiled from Phil Hellmuth’s Texas Hold’Em:
- (1) A-A
- (2) K-K
- (3) Q-Q
- (4) A-K
- (5) J-J
- (6) 10-10
- (7) 9-9
- (8) 8-8
- (9) A-Q
- (10) 7-7
The ranking above is based purely on mathematical odds. Phil Hellmuth and other professionals recommend Hold’em newbies to initially play tight by playing just these hands, and folding if you hold anything else. An even tighter form of play is to fold on anything other than top pairs (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10). A variation is to just play the top 5 from the above list.
I’ve used this type of tight playing to my advantage online. In fact, I believe Phil Hellmuth said that just playing the top ten, in online Texas Hold’em is enough of a strategy that in the long-term, you’ll come out ahead. You may suffer a bit of temporary setbacks chip-wise, in the blinds, but you’ll earn it all back in the long-run. Which means you’ll want to start with a healthy number of chips to begin with.
Now you’ll notice I said that this tight-playing strategy works long-term for online Texas Hold’em. It may not work in live games, as your opponents may get tired of your tight playing and when you do raise or see, they may try to bluff you out. The two forms of the game require slightly different skills, but learning your odds takes you a long ways ahead of any player who doesn’t understand.
In a future post, I’ll talk about how your odds change after the flop.
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The Poker Blog » Poker Odds: Poker Hands Combinations Diagram
April 19th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
[…] Fortunately for me, my father, like Chris’ father and mother, was a Mathematics Professor. I used to read his Game Theory books when I was a young nerd of somewhere between 12-13. But it took me a while fiddling with cards before I started to understand card game theory. Since my earlier series of poker hand odds seemed to draw a lot of readers, compared to other posts, I thought I’d explore game theory a bit more. (Text continued below the diagram.) […]