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Starting Hand Evaluation in Poker
This is the most ambitious article I’ve ever written about poker. I’m trying to explain the factors you should be considering when selecting a starting hand, no matter what game you might be playing.
Some authors find it useful to give rules or lists about which hands you can play and which you can’t, but I think this is a numb-brained way to play. The best way to learn about starting hands is to learn what strengths, weaknesses and other factors you are looking for, since you can then apply this knowledge to all games. Of course, making judgements about these factors is partially dependent on your experience, so this may not be the best approach for rank beginners who may do better to just stay out of trouble. In my mind however, there’s no doubt that world class players don’t rely on charts and rules about what hands can be played and when.
Starting hand selection is the first step to winning at poker. In some games, like limit Omaha Eight or Better, even the most pathetically passive player may be able to win just by exercising proper discipline when selecting starting hands.
When looking at a starting hand, you evaluate many factors in comparison to other starting hands in the same game. For example, it would not be correct to say that 8-7 in hold’em has good straight potential, without comparing it to another hand like 7-2, which has very little.
Here are the factors you should evaluate:
What high card strength does the hand have?
As I’ve mentioned in a previous article, the strength of the cards in poker is an exponential scale. In a high-only game, a trey is only slightly stronger than a deuce, but an ace is significantly stronger than a king. In a low game, where you prefer the high card strength of a hand to be as low as possible, the opposite is true but to a smaller degree (that is, a deuce is significantly better than a trey, but a queen is only slightly better than a king).
For example, in Hold’em, a hand like 3-2 has very little high card strength, a hand like A-2 has medium high card strength (since it has only one big card), and a hand like A-K has a huge amount of high card strength.
In some games, high card strength alone may be enough to win the pot. In Hold’em for example, it is not uncommon for ace-high or even king-high to win a showdown if the hand has been dealt cold, such as in an all-in situation.
What straight potential does the hand have?
The closer your cards are in rank, the more likely you are to make a straight with the hand (in nearly all games). This is part of the reason why a hand such as 9-10-J-Q in Omaha is so strong, and is almost even money with the ‘best’ hand in Omaha, A-Ks-A-Ks.
In deuce to seven lowball games, you would prefer the straight potential of the starting hand to be as low as possible. This is partly why Daniel Negreanu advises against playing draws to hands that include a six in Triple Draw Lowball, since these draws always contain cards that are closely grouped together and are more likely to make a straight.
In stud games, you should be looking at the upcards of the other players and remembering the cards that have been folded. These cards affect the straight potential of your hand – for example, if you held 4-5-6 on third street in Seven Card Stud, you would be looking for (primarily) treys and sevens, and (secondarily) for deuces and eights that are dead. If too many of these cards are gone, the straight potential of your hand is weakened and the hand may be worthless.
What flush potential does the hand have?
In Hold’em, if your cards are suited they have better potential to make a flush than two unsuited cards. In Omaha, having exactly two suited cards in your hand gives you that same potential – with only one suited card, you can’t make a flush at all, and with more than two the chances of making the flush actually decrease. In Stud, the more suited cards you have, and the fewer cards of your suit are dead, the better your chances of making a flush. This is all fairly obvious.
What is often overlooked is the huge advantage of having an ace as one of your suited cards, especially in games with community cards. Holding an ace means if you make a flush it is much less likely to be beaten (more on this later).
In deuce to seven lowball, you prefer to have no flush potential at all. Drawing, for example, to a 2-3-4-6 of hearts could be a disaster if you aren’t getting the right odds, since there are now at least 24 cards that totally destroy your hand (any 2,3,4,5,6 or heart).
What pair potential does the hand have?
If the hand includes a pair already, it has already fulfilled this potential. However, the rank of the pair is very important, particularly in games involving community cards. A hand including a pair or two pair has good potential to turn into a very strong hand like trips, a full house, or four of a kind.
Is some games it is not uncommon for a pair to win unimproved. In Hold’em for example, aces are a gigantic favourite over any other hand before the flop is dealt. In Stud, your pair might win unimproved if it is high and your opponents’ cards aren’t especially live.
In lowball and razz, you would prefer the pair potential of your hand to be as low as possible. In draw lowball, this means it is more advantageous to draw one card by splitting a pair than it is by discarding a high card. In razz, you should be looking at which cards are dead and be more inclined to play if the cards that would pair you are gone.
What wild cards or bugs do you hold?
If you are playing a game with wild cards or bugs, how many do you hold? If there is just one wild card in the deck, holding it is an advantage. Holding one of several wild cards is less of an advantage. Remember that even in a game like Hold’em where each player only receives two private cards, in a full game one of the players is more likely than not to hold a wild card if there are four in play (such as in deuces wild).
How likely are you to make your hand at the same time an opponent makes a good second best hand?
In other words, how likely are you to win a big pot if you do make your dream hand? For example. If you have A-A-K-K in Omaha and the flop comes A-A-K, your hand is almost useless since you probably won’t get any action from a worse hand. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t play A-A-K-K, but rather means that you may play the hand differently in the opening stages, perhaps to encourage opponents to bluff when you hit a hand like this.
This is why Doyle Brunson prefers A-K to A-A in Hold’em most of the time. By his reasoning, A-A is less likely to win a big pot from an opponent. This of course doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play A-A!
How likely is the hand to become a second best hand?
In other words, how likely are you to make a big hand only to have it beaten by a better one? Nolan Dalla comments in a recent column that he has lost more money with K-J than any other hand in Hold’em. This is because K-J has a lot of potential to become a second best hand – flop a king and you are behind to K-Q, A-K, K-K and A-A, or flop a jack and you are behind to A-J, J-J, Q-Q, K-K, and A-A, all of which your opponents are likely to play.
A hand like 6-5s-4-3s in Omaha Eight or Better has massive potential to become a second best hand, either by flopping a small straight or flush that is beaten, or by making a fragile low hand. In fact, it is often the worst hand in both directions and that is a disaster in high-low split games.
What hands are your opponents likely to be playing, and how does your hand compare to these?
If you take into account what hands you have seen your opponents playing, you can compare your hand with their most likely holdings and make some very intelligent decisions. For example, in Hold’em, if you know that one opponent only raises in early position with A-A, K-K and A-K, and he does raise from under the gun, you can fold a hand like A-Q or Q-Q without a second thought.
Usually your opponents aren’t this tight and you are exploiting their weaknesses by playing hands that are, on average, better than theirs.
What position are you in relative to the opposition?
It is nearly always to your advantage to act last. There are exceptions, such as when you have a very aggressive player to your left and wish to eliminate players, or if you wish to trap a calling station in the middle of you and another player. However, most of the time, the extra information that you gain by being in a later position than your opponents is invaluable. There are enough benefits to being in late position to write an entire series of articles, so I won’t go into much more detail.
Because being in late position is such an advantage, you can sometimes play hands that are weaker than usual since your position will compensate for this. For example, you might play a J-10s in Hold’em, which is a hand you would almost never play in early position.
How likely is your hand to be outdrawn or counterfeited?
In a game like Omaha, or a game with wild cards, it isn’t that rare to make the nuts on one round of betting and lose on the next. This is why it is an advantage to have redraws to better hands as part of your holding.
In a game like Hold’em, a small two pair frequently loses, because the board pairs and gives the opponent a higher two pair, or the same two pair with a higher kicker.
In Omaha Eight or Better, what is the best possible low hand is frequently counterfeited because an ace or deuce appears on the board (or another card that pairs your hand). This means it is an advantage to have protection against this, such as another low card.
What cards do you hold that weaken your opponent’s likely holdings?
In Lowball, the cards that you hold can make it very likely that nobody else holds anything worth playing. For example, if you pick up A-A-A-2-2 in Ace to Five, the chances that an opponent holds a hand worth opening with are greatly reduced, and you have an ideal opportunity to steal the antes or bluff after the draw.
In Omaha, sometimes your hand contains cards that may not be too useful in themselves, such as small suited cards, but make it less likely that an opponent will make a big hand (in this case a flush). These cards are called ‘blockers’. Again, this alone can create some very favourable bluffing situations later in the hand.
How likely is your hand to scoop the pot?
In High / Low split games, the first objective (the ‘Platinum Rule’ according to Todd Brunson) is to win the entire pot. Usually there are two ways to do this – either by making the best high hand when no low is possible, or winning both the high and low ends of the pot.
Usually, there will be a low, so it is important to play hands that have a chance to win both low and high. In Seven Card Stud Eight or Better, three suited small cards have just about the best potential to do this, provided both the suit and other low cards are still live. In Omaha Eight or Better, a hand like 8-8-7-6 is so unlikely to make a hand that will win the entire pot that it shouldn’t be played.
Occasionally, especially if you are in a late position, you can play a hand that can only win the whole pot if there is no low. In this case, your hand must be significantly better than it would in the high-only version of the game. For example, you might play A-A-J-10 in Omaha Eight or Better, which has no chance to win low if one qualifies, but is such a strong high hand that it’s probably worth playing anyway.
What odds are you getting?
Lastly we come to odds. Sometimes, it can be correct to play hands that seem bizarre because the odds you are receiving from the pot and from the other players are so high. For example, in Hold’em, you should almost definitely play a 10-8 from the button if every other player in a full game has called preflop. The odds against making the winning hand are smaller than the odds being offered by the pot and the players, so you actually profit playing the 10-8 in this spot. In other words, the better odds you are receiving, the more marginal hands (particularly long shot draws to big hands) you should play.
Odds are the reason why it is sometimes correct to play suited connectors in Hold’em. Hands like this require good odds, and you get those from having multiple opponents. There are other hands that don’t need as good odds to be playable (such as A-K), and in these cases it is usually to your advantage to play against fewer players since the chances of losing the pot are then smaller.
The ante structure is one of the factors that most greatly influences the odds you are receiving. If there was no ante or blind bet in poker, it would almost never be correct to make the first bet without the best possible hand. So, if the antes or blinds are large in relation to the bets being made and the stacks of the players involved, you should play more hands, and if the antes and blinds are comparatively small, you should play fewer hands.
Remember that if your stack is small, you might not be getting as good odds as you think!
Conclusion
I hope I’ve shown that selection of starting hands is not as simple as memorising a chart or set of rules. Like almost every part of poker, it is a deeply complicated process requiring a lot of thought and analysis.
So next time you look down at your first hole card and see an Ace, don’t automatically decide to play.
Copyright 2005 Alex Scott
