Hand strength calculator
Type any Texas Hold'em starting hand, or pick it in the grid, to see where it sits among the 169 and from which seats to raise it. Below that, work out how often a draw gets there.
Pairs run down the middle. Suited hands are above the line, offsuit hands below it.
AKs
a suited hand, 4 of the 1,326 combinations
Raise from any seat
Strong enough to raise from the first seat at a six-handed table, and to re-raise with from the top of the group.
How often a draw gets there
How to read the grid
Each square is one of the 169 kinds of starting hand. The colour says the earliest seat from which the tight ranges on our beginner strategy page raise it when nobody has entered the pot. Green hands are raised from any seat. Paler green hands wait for the cutoff. Orange hands are raised only on the button. Grey hands are folded when you are first in, though some of them defend the big blind against a small raise.
Together the coloured hands are about a tenth of all hands from the first two seats, a fifth from the cutoff and a third on the button. That is tighter than most tables play, which is the point for a new player: fewer hands, played from better seats.
The draw figures use 47 unseen cards on the flop and 46 on the turn. Nine outs, a flush draw, get there 35% of the time by the river and 19.6% of the time on the one card of the river. The pot odds calculator puts those figures against the bet you face.
Questions
How many starting hands are there in Hold'em?
1,326 two-card combinations, which fall into 169 kinds: 13 pairs, 78 suited hands and 78 offsuit hands. A pair is 6 combinations, a suited hand 4 and an offsuit hand 12.
What are the best starting hands?
Pocket aces, kings and queens, then ace-king suited, then jacks, tens and ace-queen suited. The ranking after the top few depends on the situation: suited and connected hands gain value in position and in deep stacks, high offsuit cards lose it.
Is a suited hand much better than the same hand offsuit?
A little, not a lot. Being suited adds about 2 to 3 percentage points of equity against a single opponent, and the flush draws it makes are what let you play the hand after the flop. That is why K-9 suited is a button raise here and K-9 offsuit is a fold.
Where do these ranges come from?
They are the tight ranges from our beginner strategy page, meant for a six-handed table where nobody has entered the pot. They are a starting point, not a law. As you learn the table, you widen them in late position and against players who fold too much.