The first step to winning Limit Hold’em is to choose good starting hands to play. The quality of a starting hand is not static. Some hands may be good or bad in different situations. It depends on the other players’ actions and your position. This chapter will explain what to look for when deciding what to do with your starting hand.

There are 1326 different starting hands. This counts K♣T♥ and K♠T♦ as two separate hands. If we did care about the order that we received the two cards in, then there are 2652 different combinations of two card starting hands (52 x 51). For the first card, we can get any of 52 different cards. For the second card, we can get any of the remaining 51 cards. This method would count 8♣7♣ as a different hand than 7♣8♣. However, in Hold’em we do not care about the order that the cards are dealt to us. Since every combination is represented exactly twice, this means we can divide 2652 by 2 to get the number of different combination of hands, and that equals 1326.

These 1326 different starting hands can be separated into three main categories. Pairs (9♠9♥), suited hands (A♦5♦) and unsuited hands (A♣5♠).

There are 13 different pairs, ranging from AA down to 22. There are six different possible combinations for each pair. The six different combinations for AA are:

Since there are 6 different combinations for each pair, and there are 13 different pairs, that means 78 out of the 1326 different hands are pairs or 5.9% of all hands.

There are 78 different suited hands. Some examples are A♥K♥, A♥5♥ and Q♥J♥. How did I get 78 different hands? One way is to look at the number of suited combinations with each card. If we take the A♥ first, there can be 12 different suited hands with the A♥, ranging from A♥K♥ down to A♥2♥ (there are 13 cards of each suit, but since AA can not be a suited hand, there are only 12 suited hands with the A♥). With the K♥, there are also 12 different combinations, but one of them is already counted for with the A♥. This means there are only 11 additional different

suited cards with the K♥. Subsequently, the Q♥ has 10 different new combinations, and so on until we get to the 3♥, which only has one new combination, 3♥2♥. Adding them up (12 +11+10+9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1), the total number is 78 different hands with each suit. There are four different suits, so that means there are 312 different suited hands (78 x 4). This reflects 23.5% of all hands.