Best Hands In Hold'em Poker
Below you will find a list of poker hands in order from highest to lowest to help you get started, as well as the top starting hands for Texas Hold'em. Click the button on the right to get a cheat sheet that displays the traditional poker hand rankings, which are used in the most popular variants of poker (such as Texas Hold‘em).
Winning poker hands are more about how you play them than the numbers. Take, for example, the poker percentages of AK, one of the few extremely powerful hands in Texas Hold’em. Technically, it wins less than a middle pocket pair like 7-7. Pocket aces is the best starting hand in poker. When you’re dealt pocket aces you’ve got the best hand pre-flop, period. One of the best things about pocket aces is that you dominate other strong starting hands like KK, QQ and JJ so there’s huge potential to win a massive pot.
Poker Hand Rankings Quiz
Put your knowledge of poker hands to the test with the quiz below. Good luck!
Note: Want some strategic tips to help you win at poker? Check out these 10 Quick Poker Tips!
Tie-breakers and Kickers
Best Hands In Texas Hold'em Poker
When multiple players have the same poker hands, the extra cards come in to play. These extra cards are called 'kickers'. The player with the higher kicker will take the pot when this happens.
Texas Hold'em Example:
This means the players' final five card poker hands are:
Both players have a pair of kings, but the winner of the pot is Player B because he has Player A 'out-kicked'.
In a high card or one pair hand tie-breaker, both players can sometimes have the same kicker. In this case the second kicker is used, and then the third, and so on. If both players’ best five card poker hands are identical, then they share the pot equally.
Best Hands In Poker Texas Holdem
Now, let's talk about starting hands in Texas Hold'em.
Ranking The Top 20 No Limit Texas Hold’em Starting Hands
I wanted to include something a bit more exciting in this article, so here's the top 20 No Limit Hold'em starting hands in terms of raw all-in equity (or percentages).
Although the order of the best poker hands to start with is sometimes contested, this list will give you a rough idea of which hands are stronger than others: