Best Starting Hands in Poker: The Complete Chart and Guide

Every hand of poker starts with the same decision. You look down at two cards and you have to choose: play or fold. Get this decision right consistently and you're already ahead of most players at the table. Get it wrong and no amount of clever play later in the hand will save you. This guide covers exactly which hands are worth playing, which to throw away, and how your position at the table changes everything. By the end you'll have a clear system instead of a gut feeling.

How Many Starting Hands Are There?

There are 1,326 possible two-card combinations in a standard deck. Once you group them into pairs, suited hands, and offsuit hands, that collapses down to 169 distinct starting hands. Those 169 hands are what strategy charts are built around.

A quick note on notation, because it comes up constantly. AKs means ace-king suited (both cards share the same suit). AKo means ace-king offsuit. 88 means pocket eights, a pair. You'll see this shorthand throughout this guide and in any serious discussion of poker strategy.

The Best Starting Hands (The Premium Group)

AA is the best starting hand in poker. Full stop. Before the flop, pocket aces are a mathematical favorite against every other hand you'll face. KK sits right behind it. Almost as powerful, though it does have one real vulnerability: when an ace hits the board, a lot of your opponents become suddenly very interested in the pot.

QQ is strong but gets more complicated in multi-way pots, especially when overcards fall. AKs (ace-king suited) is the best non-pair hand you can hold. It can make the nut flush, flop top pair with the best possible kicker, and has enough equity to commit your stack with preflop in most situations.

Round out the premium tier with JJ, AKo, AQs, and TT. These hands are profitable opens from any position. The top few (AA through QQ especially) are absolutely worth getting your whole stack in before the flop. Don't talk yourself out of it.

Strong and Playable Hands

The next tier includes AQo, AJs, ATs, KQs, KJs, and pairs from 99 down to 66. Solid hands. You can open them from most positions, call a single raise without discomfort, and feel good about your spot post-flop.

That said, you start being more selective in early position. AQo on the button is a different situation than AQo from UTG at a full table. Position changes the math, and we'll cover that in detail shortly.

Suited Connectors and Small Pairs

These are speculative hands: 87s, 76s, 65s, and small pairs like 22 through 55. They don't connect with the board very often. But when they do, the payout tends to be real. Straights, flushes, and sets win big pots. A flopped set with 33 against someone's overpair is the kind of hand that defines a session.

The key with speculative hands is seeing the flop cheaply and in position. Playing J7s from under the gun for a 3-bet pot is not the play. Calling a single raise on the button with 65s? Entirely reasonable. Most beginners either throw these hands away constantly or play them from any seat at any price. Neither extreme is right.

Hands Beginners Overvalue (and Lose Money With)

This section matters more than the premium hand list. Most players already know AA is good. The real leaks come from the hands that look decent but quietly drain your stack.

Weak offsuit aces: A5o, A6o, A8o. The ace looks great. The kicker is the problem. You flop top pair with A8, your opponent holds AK. They bet, you call, you lose a big pot. This is called being dominated, and it's one of the most expensive situations in poker. The ace in your hand is the same ace in theirs, but their kicker beats yours on every board.

Offsuit broadways like KJo, QTo, KTo are position-dependent. Raise them from the cutoff or button? Fine. Open them under the gun at a full table and you're asking for trouble. When you face a 3-bet or an ace-high flop, these hands become awkward fast.

Any two suited cards: being suited adds roughly 2 to 3 percent equity to a hand. It does not turn trash into treasure. J3s is a fold. Q4s is a fold. The suited part is a bonus on otherwise strong hands. It's not a reason to play weak ones.

The Worst Starting Hands (Just Fold)

72o is the classic worst hand. The two cards can't connect for a straight, the high card is weak, and they're not suited. It's bad in every measurable way. Spend any time in poker circles and you'll hear it mentioned almost fondly, the hand everyone agrees to fold immediately.

82o, 93o, 94o, and similar garbage hands belong in the same pile. There's no situation where you're happy to see these in the hole. Fold them, forget them, and wait for something worth playing.

Why Position Changes Everything

Position is the single most important factor in deciding which hands to play. The later you act in the betting, the more information you have before making a decision. More information means you can play more hands profitably. For a full breakdown of every seat at the table, check out our guide to poker positions.

Early position (UTG and UTG+1): you act first throughout most of the hand with almost no information about what anyone else is doing. Stick to premium hands. Roughly 10 to 15 percent of hands is the right range.

Middle position: open up slightly. Add more broadway hands and mid-pairs. Still disciplined, but not as tight as UTG.

Late position (cutoff and button): the button can profitably open around 40 percent of hands or more. You have maximum information and act last on every post-flop street. These seats are where money is made. And if you're still building your bankroll while you learn all this, understanding bankroll management is the other side of the equation.

The blinds: tricky. You put money in preflop but act first post-flop. Be selective about defending the blinds and think carefully before calling from the small blind with marginal hands.

To tie it all together: the same 99 that's a clear raise on the button might be a fold from UTG at a tight table. Position changes the math, and it changes it a lot.

A Simple Starting Hands Chart

These are solid opening baselines for a standard cash game. They're not rigid rules, but they're a reliable starting point.

Here's what each position's range looks like on a standard 13×13 hand matrix. Green cells are hands you open-raise; dark cells are folds.

Good players adjust this based on who's at the table, stack sizes, and tendencies they've picked up during the session. The chart is a foundation, not a ceiling.

These grids show what to play. The hard part is remembering them at the table. That's what Poker Reflex trains, until the right play is automatic.

Why Memorizing Charts Isn't Enough

Knowing the chart and actually using it under pressure are two different skills. In a live hand you have seconds to decide. Your opponent just 3-bet, everyone's watching, and the chart you studied this morning isn't going to surface automatically. Not until you've drilled these decisions enough that they feel instinctive.

The players who improve fastest aren't necessarily the ones who read the most. They're the ones who put in reps. Drilling preflop decisions until they're automatic is how you close the gap between knowing what's right and actually doing it at the table. That's exactly the idea behind Poker Reflex.

Common Questions About Starting Hands

What is the best starting hand in poker? AA, pocket aces. It's a favorite against every other hand before the flop and the only hand you should feel genuinely excited about every time you see it.

What is the worst starting hand? 72o. Can't make a straight with the two cards together, low high card, not suited. Bad in every direction.

How many hands should a beginner play? Play tight, around 15 to 20 percent of hands. It sounds boring, but discipline early is what separates players who build their game from those who spin their wheels for years.

Should I always fold weak hands? In most beginner spots, yes. There's always a temptation to play more hands because folding feels passive. But patience is a skill. Getting involved with trash hands is expensive, and the cost adds up faster than most people expect.

Final Thoughts

Great preflop play isn't about getting fancy. It's about playing the right hands from the right positions, again and again, until it's second nature. The players who master that have a foundation everything else can be built on. The ones who skip it spend years wondering why their results stay inconsistent.

Start simple: play tight in early position, open up on the button, avoid dominated hands, and respect position. Those four things alone will put you ahead of a huge portion of the field. And when you're ready to understand the math behind these ranges, check out our guide to GTO poker for beginners.