1. Best Hands In Poker Texas Holdem
2. Texas Holdem Poker Hand Ranking
3. Poker Hold Em Winning Hands
4. Texas Holdem Poker Hands List
5. Free Poker Hold'em Texas

6+ Hold’em is a popular ‘short deck’ poker format that plays much like Texas Hold’em, but with a few exciting differences:

Poker Hand Rankings - Texas Holdem Starting Hands Chart. At the bottom of this page is a comprehensive listing of Texas Hold'em starting hands based on their EV (expected value). Expected value is the average number of big blinds this hand will make or lose. Poker Hand Rankings - Texas Holdem Starting Hands Chart. At the bottom of this page is a comprehensive listing of Texas Hold'em starting hands based on their EV (expected value). Expected value is the average number of big blinds this hand will make or lose.

• All cards lower than a six are removed from the deck
• Everyone posts an ante and only the button posts a blind – known as the ‘button blind’
• A flush beats a full-house

Available in cash games, exclusively at PokerStars, 6+ Hold’em is your chance to play an action-packed variant loved by high-stakes players around the world.

Let’s face it – fives, fours, threes, and twos got in the way a little bit in regular Holdem. They were consistent contributors to dry boring flops, blank turns, and no one ever making a hand. 6+ Hold’em (known conventionally as ‘Short Deck’) has been taking the poker world by storm and giving jaded long-term players a fresh breath of life as they gamble it up in this wild format of the game played with a 36-card deck. Six Plus is exactly as it sounds. There is no card in the deck below a six. As you can imagine, this leads to a lot less discoordination and makes it far easier to make a strong hand. When I first saw this game, I recall my first thought being:

‘Wait a second…it’s almost impossible not to make a straight!’

While this is a huge exaggeration. I think it captures the instinctive reaction of most players. Regular Holdem players must adapt quickly in 6+ Hold’em, migrating from a world where good hands are relatively rare, to one where they come along much more frequently. We shall get into the strategic effects of this shift in a future article. Today’s job is to get our heads around what hand rankings and rules have changed and why these changes were necessary to make 6+ Hold’em the harmoniously enjoyable game that it has become.

Blind & Antes

6+ Hold’em uses a ‘button blind’ structure: every player posts an ante, and the player seated at the button position is the only one who posts a blind – meaning there is only one blind per hand, rather than traditional small/big blind format.

The action starts with the player seated to the left of the button. Each hand then plays out according to Texas Hold’em rules, with pre-flop, flop, turn and river betting rounds.

If you’ve played Texas Hold’em games before, the rules of 6+ Hold’em are easy to follow.

Hand Rankings

The table below illustrates how the hand rankings have changed in 6+ Hold’em to accommodate the shorter deck:

The Top Hands

There is no change at the very top of the hand ranking chart. While you will make a straight flush and a royal flush more often in 6+ Hold’em than in Holdem, it is still very hard to make these hands relative to the other hands. Four of a Kind is a hand you will see much more often than in Holdem since there are now 9 ranks of card instead of thirteen but is still rare compared with other 6+ Hold’em holdings.

Flushes vs. Boats

The main change to the hierarchy is that Flushes now beat Full Houses (boats). This makes sense and to see why think of it this way.

In regular Holdem, there are four 9s in the deck, but there are also four of twelve other ranks of card. One in thirteen cards is a nine in regular Holdem. In 6+ Hold’em, there are only nine ranks of card and so one in nine cards is a 9. If you are dealt 99, any card in the deck goes from having a 2/50 = 4% chance of being a 9 to having a 2/34 = 6% chance. In 6+ Hold’em, it is 50% easier to find those set making cards. In fact, in 6+ Hold’em you will fail to flop a set (32/34 x 31/33 x 30/32) = 83% of the time. This means that we flop a set 17% of the time! After we have done the hard part, and hit one of our two cards to make a set, it is much easier for the board to then pair since sixteen of the cards that would prevent it from pairing in regular holdem (the deuces through fives) do not exist. Those cards really did spoil all the fun.

As for flushes, they are sadly no easier to make and come along less often than a full house does. While there are less ranks of cards in the 6+ Hold’em deck, there are still the same number of suits. Had we also removed all of the diamonds from the deck, we would have made flushes more likely. As it is, every card still has a one in four chance of being a spade (13/52 = 9/36).

One thing that has changed about flushes in short deck is that when a you hold a card that blocks an opponent from making a flush, you will block a greater portion of his possible flush cards. The board is J♣8♣6♣10♠Q♥ and we hold A♥K♣. In regular Holdem, we would remove one of ten remaining clubs, leaving Villain with nine clubs to instead of ten to form a flush. In other words, there are 10% less clubs in the deck for him to make a flush with when we hold this blocker. In 6+ Hold’em, there were only six possible clubs and we reduce this number to five due to our K♣ blocker. We have now made it 17% harder for Villain to hold a flush by removing a sixth of the clubs in the deck. Blockers matter more in 6+ Hold’em in just about every way due to the smaller deck, not just when it comes to blocking flushes.

Straights vs. Trips

While it is easier to flop three of a kind in 6+ Hold’em than it is to flop a straight, it is easier to make a straight by the river. There are only 9 ranks of cards remaining in the deck so if the board doesn’t double-pair, there will be straights everywhere. A board like K♠J♠10♣8♥6♥ is scary at the best of times in regular Holdem. In 6+ Hold’em, there are no deuces through fives to dilute the number of straights in each player’s range. The result is that it is incredibly easy to hold a straight in 6+ Hold’em. Pre-flop you will be dealt [97, Q9, AQ] 48/630 times. In Regular Holdem you will be dealt these hands 48/1326 times. While there are some versions of short deck Holdem where three of a kind beats a straight, this is not the case in 6+ Hold’em and so connected cards are very powerful. This format of the game encourages action by providing an incentive to play connected cards, which come along very frequently.

We should also note that there is a rather unconventional looking straight available in 6+ Hold’em. A6789 is a low straight in 6+ Hold’em just as A2345 is a low straight in regular Holdem. Look out for this one, it can really tak you by surprise if you are not careful.

Conclusion

6+ Hold’em is a different game. Some of the rules are very different, but as we have seen, these adaptations have been necessary to ensure that the game is fair and balanced. Now that we are acquainted with the different hand rankings and hand formation rules, it is time to get stuck into some strategy. In my next article on 6+ Hold’em, I will be discussing pre-flop hand selection.

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With few exceptions, all poker games place hands on the same
scale from high- to low-value. Poker hands are ranked depending
on their likelihood. The least-likely hands are the
highest-ranked; the most common hands are the lowest-ranked.
Identical poker hands are ranked by which hands holds cards of
the highest value.

Poker Hand Rank

Here is the standard hand rank, from highest to lowest:

A royal flush is a hand where all the cards are of the same suit and the 5 highest cards in consecutive order (10, J, Q, K, A). This hand is the best hand that you can get in the game of Texas Hold’em.

A straight flush is a hand where all the cards are of the same suit and are in consecutive order. For example, a 23456, all of hearts, is a straight flush. In the event of a tie, the straight flush with the highest card wins.

A 4 of a kind is a hand where 4 of the 5 cards are of the same ranking. An example of a hand with a 4 of a kind might have KKKK2. That would be the 2 in every suit–clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades. In the event of a tie, the 4 of a kind with the highest hand ranking wins.

A full house is a hand that consists of 3 cards of one rank and 2 cards of another rank. An example of a full house might look like this: KKKQQ. In the event of a tie, the hand with the higher cards in the 3 cards is the winner.

A flush is a hand that consists of 5 cards of the same suit—clubs, diamonds, hearts, or spades. In the event of a tie, the flush with the highest card is the winner.

A straight is a hand where all 5 cards of consecutive ranks. 23456 is an example of a straight. In the event of a tie, the straight with the highest card is the winner.

2 pairs is a hand where you have 2 cards of one rank and 2 cards of another rank along with a final card of another rank. An example of 2 pairs might look like this: AAKK7.In the event of a tie, the hand with the highest pair wins.

1 pair is a hand where you 2 cards of one rank and 3 cards with different ranks. An example of a pair might look like this: JJ278. In the event of a tie, the higher ranked pair wins.

High card means a hand where none of the other hand rankings apply. If no one still in the hand can make a pair or better, the player with the highest card in his hand wins the pot.

Best Hands In Poker Texas Holdem

Playing a live game of poker requires that you know this
hierarchy. For new players, this may seem a little daunting.
After all, here you have nine pieces of complex information to
remember in precise order.

A Word About Mnemonic Devices

I learned the order of poker hands using a mnemonic. I think
anyone can use this simple method to learn the hierarchy in a
matter of minutes. Mnemonics are popular memory devices used by
students, teachers, and people of all stripes for hundreds of
years in order to remember complex information.

You probably used a mnemonic device to remember the order of
the planets in our solar system. I remember learning the
sentence: “My very excellent mother just served us nine pizzas.”
The first letter of each of the words in that sentence will help
you remember that the planets go in this order – Mercury, Venus,
Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. I’ll
probably never forget that fact, thanks to the mnemonic device I
was taught.

The trouble is, it’s hard to convert hand rankings into
words. Besides that, I don’t think you learn much about poker by
simply memorizing the order of hands. You should use the
opportunity of needing to learn proper hand hierarchy to improve
your understanding of poker strategy.

The tips below will help you understand the proper order of
poker hands better and introduce you to some basic poker
concepts to help you improve your overall game.

Low-Value Poker Hands

To remember the order of the four lowest-value hands, just
remember the number series “0, 1, 2, 3.”

• 0 means “high card.” Having nothing in your hand means
  the value of your hand depends on the value of your highest
  card. Remember – in poker, aces rank high, while 2’s rank
  low.
• 1 means “one pair.” Any hand that contains just a single
  pair of cards and nothing else valuable is a 1.
• 2 means “two pair.” This is a hand that contains two
  pairs of cards.
• 3 means “three-of-a-kind.” It’s the most valuable of the
  low-value hands.

High-Value Poker Hands

For the purpose of this post, I’m calling every hand above a
three-of-a-kind a “high-value hand,” but lots of poker
strategists would consider a straight to be a low-value hand.
This is really a difference in philosophy and a language issue
more than anything else.

For that reason, and for simplicity’s sake, I like to think
of straight as a “/” symbol in my mnemonic. That means our
current mnemonic string goes: “0, 1, 2, 3, /.”

It’s easier to memorize the order of the other high-ranking
hands if you count the number of letters in the hand’s name.
It’s made all the easier to remember by the fact that the number
of letters increases as you move up the scale.

Here’s how I break it down:

• 5 – The word flush contains five letters.
• 9 – The words full house contain nine letters.
• 11 – The words four of a kind contain eleven letters.
• 13 – The words straight flush contain thirteen letters.
• 18 – The words royal straight flush contain eighteen
  letters.

Putting them all together, our mnemonic is: “0 – 1 – 2 – 3 /
5 – 9 – 11 – 13 – 18.”

Other Ways to Memorize Hand Hierarchy

I’m not going to pretend that the method I used to learn hand
hierarchy is the only one that will work. The three ideas below
are the most popular tactics on the Web besides the use of
mnemonics, based on my research. You can use any of the four
methods described on this post to keep track of what hand beats
what other hand. That way, you’ll be able to plan your tactics
ahead of time and make smart bidding decisions.

Rote Memorization

Some people learn best by repeated drilling of the material
to be memorized. I’ve heard of actors reading their scripts over
and over, playing tapes of the script in their sleep, and
learning their lines by rote. I can’t think of any reason why
you shouldn’t try this method.

Hand Evaluation Diagrams

Various poker trainer programs and strategy gurus have put
together diagrams to help you analyze your hand. You can use
these in poker rooms, and obviously you can use them online, so
long as you don’t care about the other guys at the table making
fun of you. They’re available for free with a simple Google
search.

Texas Holdem Poker Hand Ranking

Frequent Exposure

The more rounds of poker you play, the more you’ll become
familiar with all the rules, including the rules of hand
ranking. You may lose a bunch on the way there, because of your
lack of familiarity with hand ranks, but, by God, you’ll get it
eventually.

Poker Hold Em Winning Hands

Conclusion

Texas Holdem Poker Hands List

Remember that some poker variations assign different values
to cards and hands. Some games are totally reversed, rewarding
the lowest-value hand instead of the highest-value one. Other
games may consider an Ace to be low, or use Jokers, which throws
off the hierarchy and strategy a bit.

Free Poker Hold'em Texas

I hope that this page helped you learn about the value of the
cards you’re dealt. I believe the best way to practice your
newfound understanding of hand hierarchy is to get out there and
play a bunch of poker. If you’re still new to the game and not
yet comfortable with your understanding of hand rankings, you
can always play in free-to-play apps or use play-money at your
favorite online poker room.