How Many Possible Texas Holdem Hands Are There Now
If there are three of a kind on the table (community cards) in a Texas Holdem game that are used by two or more players to make a full house, then we would look at the strength of the pair to determine a winner. FLUSH: Flush Cards: NA: A flush is any hand with five cards of the same suit. Fact: There are 1,326 combinations of starting hands in Texas Hold’em in total. Working out hand combinations using 'known' cards. Let’s say we hold KQ on a flop of KT4 (suits do not matter). How many possible combinations of AK and TT are out there that our opponent could hold? Sometimes the best texas hold em hand is made by the five shared cards on their own. If they were 10-10-10-10-A and you had 9-9 your hole cards would not play as there is a four-of-a-kind of higher value already showing. End of the game. There are two ways a hand can end. Looking at the QT9s board, there are many cards which will modify the strength of many hands. If we have AQ or TT on this board we have a strong hand; but on many turn cards such as a K, J, 8 or any heart, the strength of these hands will significantly degrade. Also, there are many hand types that your opponent may have hit this board with. Of the 1,326 combinations, there are 169 distinct starting hands grouped into three shapes: 13 pocket pairs (paired hole cards), 13 × 12 ÷ 2 = 78 suited hands and 78 unsuited hands; 13 + 78 + 78 = 169. The relative probability of being dealt a hand of each given shape is different.
I’ve been asked by a new player to explain how I got to 169 possibilities of starting hands from a previous page. Good question!
In Texas Hold’em poker there are 2,652 possible starting hands. The way that you first get all the possible starting hands is to take the number of cards (52) and multiply that by 51 times.
Remember that the first 2 cards that can be dealt can be anything from the deck. Out of these 2,652 combinations, there may not be different hands though, because the same two cards dealt in two different orders are still the same hand. In the following two examples, you can see that the cards are equal and that there aren’t any differences. Kind of reminds you of algebra in school, huh?
is EQUAL to
is EQUAL to
That reduces the number of hands, 2,652 down by half or 2,652/2 = 1,326.
Still with me? Good.
Now, out of the 1,326 hands, thinking of the samples above, there is a lot of duplication in VALUE of the hands.
The following hands are all equal in VALUE:
is EQUAL to is EQUAL to
Okay, have you digested that? Good. One last thing. Because of the possibility of getting a flush, cards like the following are NOT equal:
How Many Possible Texas Holdem Hands Are There Time
is NOT EQUAL
This is because the first two cards have a chance at making a flush and the second two cards not do not have a chance for making a flush.
We need to get the total number of possibly suited starting cards from this bunch so that would be 13 x 12 /2 for a total of 78.
Continuing on, there should be 78 possible suited starting cards and 78 possible non-suited starting cards and 13 possible pairs for a total of 169 cards.
So looking at it this way, there are 169 possible starting hands in this game. Hopefully I answered the question without making it too confusing.
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