The Starting Hand in Texas Holdem

The two “hole” cards that are dealt to the player at the beginning of the game are a very good indicator of how the hand will turn out for that player. Because there are only two cards dealt to each player, it is easy to characterize all of the starting hands. With 52 cards in the deck there are 1,326 distinct possible combinations of hole cards that can be dealt to each player. But, because no suit is more powerful than any other suit in the game of poker, the number of distinct combinations declines significantly. With this in mind, there are only 169 different combinations that could be dealt. Of those 169 different combinations, thirteen would be pairs from 2 through ace. Because there is a limited number of starting hands, there has been much research and detail that has gone into understanding the probability and strategy of receiving each combination of cards. This is what separates Texas Holdem from other poker games because the number of starting card combinations forces strategy to be used when separating the hands into broad categories of how to play the hand.