How many starting hands are there in Texas Hold'em?

There are 1,326 specific two-card combinations, but only 169 strategically distinct starting hands: 13 pocket pairs, 78 suited hands and 78 offsuit hands. Every starting hand chart is a 13x13 grid of those 169, which is why they all look the same shape.

What are the best starting hands in poker?

Pocket aces, kings, queens and ace-king are the top four from every position and in every format. Below them the order shifts with position and with how the table plays, which is exactly why a chart is organised by seat rather than as one universal list.

Should I play suited connectors?

From late position, yes. Hands like 76 suited make straights and flushes that get paid off, but they need position and multiple opponents or fold equity to be worth playing. From under the gun at a 6-max table they are a losing open at most stakes.

How many hands should I be playing?

At 6-max, a solid overall VPIP is roughly 22-26% of hands. That is an average across six very different seats: around 15% from under the gun rising to about 45% on the button. Playing 25% from every seat is a leak in both directions at once.

Do starting hand charts work in live games?

The charts are a correct default, but live low-stakes games are far looser and more passive than the games solvers assume. Against opponents who never fold, speculative suited hands go up in value and thin offsuit broadway hands go down.

Poker Starting Hands: The Complete Chart by Position

Every serious poker strategy starts in the same place: which two cards are worth playing, and from where. Get that right and you are ahead of most of the field before the flop is dealt. Get it wrong and no amount of clever postflop play will rescue you, because you will spend the session playing weak hands out of position against stronger ranges.

This is the complete starting hand picture for 6-max no-limit Hold'em: all 169 hands, how position reshapes which of them you open, and how to actually use a chart without becoming a robot.

The 169 hands

A deck deals 1,326 distinct two-card combinations, but most of them are strategically identical. The ace of spades with the king of spades plays exactly like the ace of hearts with the king of hearts. Collapse the suits and you are left with 169 distinct hands:

13 pocket pairs — AA down to 22
78 suited hands — AKs, AQs, and so on
78 offsuit hands — AKo, AQo, and so on

This is why every starting hand chart in existence is a 13x13 grid. Pairs run down the diagonal, suited hands sit above it, offsuit hands below. Once you have read one chart you can read all of them.

The combination counts matter more than they look. There are 6 ways to be dealt a specific pocket pair, 4 ways to be dealt a specific suited hand, and 12 ways to be dealt a specific offsuit hand. So offsuit hands are three times as common as their suited counterparts — and considerably weaker. That asymmetry is why a chart's offsuit region is so much emptier than its suited region.

Why position changes everything

The single most important fact about starting hands is that there is no such thing as a good hand in isolation. K-J offsuit is a comfortable open on the button and a clear fold under the gun, and nothing about the cards changed.

Two reasons drive it.

Players left to act. Opening under the gun at a 6-max table means five opponents still get to look at their cards. Opening on the button means two. Every additional player behind you is another chance that someone wakes up with a hand that dominates yours, so the range you can profitably open shrinks with each seat you move away from the button.

Acting last after the flop. Position is worth several big blinds per 100 hands on its own. Seeing what your opponent does before you decide lets you value bet thinner, bluff more accurately and control the size of the pot. Marginal hands become playable simply because you will play them better.

The result is the defining shape of preflop poker: the button opens roughly four times as many hands as under the gun. Not slightly more — four times.

Opening ranges by seat

Here is the shape of each 6-max seat. Percentages are the fraction of all hands you open when the action folds to you.

Under the gun — about 15%

The tightest range at the table, and the one where discipline pays most. Pairs down to about 55, ace-king through ace-jack suited, the suited broadways, and very little offsuit beyond A-K and A-Q.

The instinct to open K-Q offsuit or A-9 suited here is the most common early-position leak. Those hands are dominated by exactly the range that continues against an early-position raise. The full breakdown lives on the UTG opening range page.

Middle position (hijack) — about 19%

One seat wider. Add the mid pocket pairs, the rest of the suited aces, the suited broadway hands you were folding, and K-Q offsuit.

The jump from under the gun to the hijack is the smallest of the whole progression, and that is worth knowing. Only one player has been removed from behind you, so the correct adjustment is a handful of hands rather than a different strategy. Players who loosen up dramatically in the hijack are usually reacting to the relief of no longer being first to act, not to anything about the maths.

Cutoff — about 27%

The seat where the range genuinely opens up. Suited connectors down to about 65, suited kings, most offsuit broadways, and every pocket pair. You are now stealing the blinds a meaningful fraction of the time, and only the button and the blinds can punish you.

Button — about 45%

The most profitable seat in poker, and the widest range. Every pair, every suited ace, every suited king, most suited hands generally, and a wide offsuit range including hands like Q-9 offsuit and J-9 offsuit.

You are guaranteed position for the rest of the hand and there are only two players left to get through. Even mediocre hands show a profit here purely because of how well they play after the flop. See the button opening range for the exact grid.

Static charts can't adapt to your opponents

Sharkling's neural solver does — it re-solves the spot for the table you're actually sitting at, then drills you on it.

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An awkward seat with an awkward strategy. You have already invested half a big blind, so the price is good, but you will be out of position for the entire hand against the big blind. Modern solver play raises a wide, polarised range here and mixes in some limping, rather than calling.

Not an opening range at all. When someone raises and everyone else folds, you are getting a price no other seat ever gets, because your blind is already in the pot. Against a button open you defend well over half your hands. Against an under-the-gun open you defend far less, because the range you are up against is so much stronger.

Hand groups and what they are for

Charts are easier to remember as categories than as 169 individual decisions.

Premium pairs (AA-QQ) and A-K. Playable from anywhere, raising and re-raising. Roughly 2.6% of hands. These pay for a lot of the folding you do elsewhere.

Medium pairs (JJ-77). Strong but not invincible. Their value comes largely from flopping a set, which happens about 12% of the time — an eight-to-one shot that pays enormously when it lands.

Small pairs (66-22). Almost purely set-mining hands. They need either implied odds from deep stacks or an opponent who cannot fold. Out of position with shallow stacks they are marginal at best.

Suited aces. Two distinct groups. A-K through A-J suited are strong hands in their own right. A-5 through A-2 suited are playable because they make nut flushes, make wheel straights, and hold the ace as a blocker when you want to bluff.

Suited broadways (K-Q, K-J, Q-J, J-10 suited). Consistently strong, playable from most seats, and they flop well — top pair, straight draws and flush draws all at once.

Suited connectors (T9s down to 54s). Late position hands. They flop big or fold, and their value is entirely in the pots you win when they connect. Playing them out of position against a raiser is where their edge disappears.

Offsuit broadway (A-J, K-Q, Q-J offsuit). Deceptively weak. They make top pair with a mediocre kicker and no backup draws, which is exactly the hand that loses a big pot rather than winning one.

Everything else. About two-thirds of the grid, and folding it is not passive play — it is the foundation of a winning strategy.

A useful sanity check across all of these groups: a hand's value comes from how often it makes the best hand, not how often it makes a hand. Q-9 offsuit makes a pair constantly and is a losing open from most seats, because the pairs it makes are second best whenever money goes in. J-10 suited makes a pair less often and is comfortably playable, because when it connects it connects properly — straights, flushes, and top pair with a real kicker.

Reading the chart properly

A starting hand chart tells you what to do when the action folds to you. That is a much narrower question than "what do I do preflop", and treating it as the whole answer is the most common way charts get misused.

Facing a raise changes everything. When someone has already opened, your continuing range is far tighter and the correct action is often a three-bet rather than a call. K-J suited is a fine button open and a poor call of an under-the-gun raise.

Position is relative, not absolute. What matters is your seat versus the opener's, not your seat in the abstract. On the button facing a cutoff open you have position; in the cutoff facing a hijack open you do not.

Stack depth moves the boundaries. Charts assume around 100 big blinds. At 40 big blinds, implied-odds hands like small pairs and suited connectors lose value because there is not enough behind to win when they hit. At 200 big blinds they gain it.

The full logic of when to follow the grid and when to leave it is covered in the guide to when to play each hand preflop.

When to deviate

Charts are generated by solvers against opponents who play back correctly. Real tables are rarely that. Three deviations are worth more than all the rest combined:

Against players who never fold, drop the thin bluff-heavy hands — offsuit broadways, weak suited kings — and add hands that make strong made hands. Suited connectors and small pairs go up in value; hands that win by fold equity go down.

Against players who fold too much, do the opposite. Widen your steals from the cutoff and button aggressively. If the blinds fold 70% of the time, you can profitably open close to any two cards.

Against a table that three-bets constantly, tighten your opens from early seats and stop opening the bottom of your late-position range, because you will be forced to fold it far too often.

Note that all three are adjustments to the chart, not replacements for it. You need the default before deviating from it means anything.

Putting it into practice

The fastest route from "I have read a chart" to "I play a correct range" is narrower than most people expect:

Learn one seat at a time. Start with the button and the big blind — the two seats you play most and where mistakes cost the most.
Review your folds, not just your losses. The hands that quietly cost you money are the ones you opened from early position and then abandoned on the flop.
Check your VPIP against your seat. If your under-the-gun and button frequencies are similar, you have found a leak worth more than any postflop study.
Keep the grid open while you play. Recognition takes a few thousand hands. Until then, look it up.

The solver-built grids for all six seats are on the preflop charts by position page, each one showing exactly which hands to raise, call and fold. And if any of this depends on knowing what actually beats what at showdown, start at the poker hand rankings chart — starting hand selection only makes sense once the outcomes are automatic.