A Tier List for Poker Hands

Many of you guys have probably played or heard of the game Texas Hold’em. If you’ve ever played the game, you’ll know that at the beginning of every hand, you will be dealt two cards (we call the two cards “hole cards” or simply one’s “hand”). Each hand varies in strength and playability, and there are better hands and worse hands. For example, hands that are typically considered “good” usually either contain high cards, are a pair of two same cards, are suited, or are connected; whereas “bad hands” are usually those consisting of weak cards and don’t make any visible pattern. 

Beginners tend to play almost every hand they’re dealt (we call it “playing a wide range,” with “range” meaning a list of all possible hands one could play). Yet, as players get more experienced, their range of playable hands tends to narrow down as they realize that a lot of hands like 46o (meaning “4 6 offsuit”) and J3s (meaning Jack 3 suited) are not worth playing. Eventually, your range should approach what’s called a “Game Theory Optimal (GTO) opening range,” consisting of only good hands like suited aces, pocket pairs, suited connectors, and two high cards because such a tight range statistically makes you the most money in the long run. 

However, just because a hand looks pretty, it doesn’t mean you should play it. Some hands, while naturally strong, are extremely difficult to play with. Playing them might lead you into many difficult situations and potential mistakes at the poker table. Since these strong hands often put you into difficult spots and create many rooms to make mistakes, their full potential (or “equity”) were often never realized. As a result, these strong hands may lose you money. On the contrary, there are also hands that are apparently weak that allow you to make clear and easy decisions postflop (“postflop” means “after the first three community cards — the flop — are dealt”), making you money despite their initial weakness. 

In this blog, I would like to show you my tier list of some poker hands that were most often played.

 

S Tier – QQ (meaning pocket Queens), AKs (meaning Ace King suited). 

QQ is just my favorite, period. They have won me the biggest pots of my life (“pot” means the total amount of chips involved in a hand. When you win a hand, you win the “pot,” which is all the chips in the middle of the table). With QQ, your decisions are clear-cut because when your opponent calls (means matching your bet) you and you see the flop, you can almost be sure that you have the best hand if there are no A or K on the board. This is because AA and KK will almost never call you preflop. However, if your opponent bets into you aggressively when there is an A or K, it’s an easy fold (means “to surrender,” stopping your losses and giving up your chance to win the pot).

AKs are also great. If you go all-in preflop, AKs lower your opponents’ chances of having AA or KK, have near 50% equity against pocket pairs, and win very often (we call it “dominate”) lower high card combinations. If there are no preflop all-ins and you see the flop, AKs dominate every lower Aces and Kings and allow you to make nut straights and nut flushes, which are huge moneymakers. 

A Tier – AA, KK, AQs, AKo, JT (suited or offsuit), Low Suited Aces.

You might be surprised that I put AA and KK on tier A instead of tier S. While AA and KK are great hands (statistically, the best and 2nd best hand in poker, respectively), they don’t play very well postflop. It is very easy to go overaggressive with AA and cause your opponent to either fold or call you with a better hand, causing you to lose money. And it is very difficult to fold KK when an A hits the boards, also causing losses. 

AQs, AKo are strong when they hit a pair. You can very often be sure that you have the best hand when you make a hand with AQs and AKo, making their decisions easy. JT is the opposite. When it’s strong, you will often have a straight or a flush, but when it’s weak like a singular pair, folding won’t be a difficult decision. 

Low Suited Aces like A4s and A5s are amazing because they are either very strong or easily foldable. When you make a flush, you almost always win; but when you make a singular pair of Aces and your opponent gets aggressive, you won’t feel bad folding them. Also, they make amazing bluffs and do a great job balancing your range. 

B Tier – Low Suited Connectors, Pocket Pairs, Suited Broadways, Medium Suited Aces.

Low Suited Connectors (like 45s, 56s, 67s) and small Pocket Pairs (like 33, 44, 55) are great drawing hands that either make very strong hands such as three of a kinds, straights, or flushes or completely miss. They are very easy to draw with, they surprise your opponent, but they rarely lose you a lot of money because one can easily fold them when they don’t make very strong hands. The only drawback is that they don’t win very often and you’ll have to be patient.

Medium Suited Aces (like A8s, A9s, AT), suited Broadways (like KJs, KQs, QJs), medium Pocket Pairs (like 88, 99, TT) are strong hands, but they start to enter the horrifying territory of “Trap Hands.” While Suited Aces and Pocket Pairs are capable of making nut flushes and three of a kind, they are also much more difficult to fold when your opponent is strong. When you have A9s, an Ace comes to the board, and your opponent bets aggressively as if he has an Ace, it is hard to tell whether you’re winning or not, making it possible for you to either win or lose a lot of money. 

C Tier – KJo, KQo, ATo

These hands are classic “Trap Hands.” It is possible and easy for you to lose a lot of money with those hands (aka. “Reverse-implied odds”). For example, when you have KJo and hit a K on the board, you lose to KQ, AK, two-pairs, and completed draws very often; and with top pair and a high kicker (meaning the 2nd card), folding is very difficult, resulting in you getting “stacked” (meaning losing all of your chips). This is the reason why, despite the fact that KJo, KQo, and ATo are strong hands, you’re actually supposed to fold them a lot of times preflop when your opponents are aggressive.

F Tier – JJ, AJo, JQo.

These hands are the extreme cases of the horrifying family of “Trap Hands.” Personally, these are the hands I hate the most because they lose you so much money and it is so difficult to fold them at any spot. 

JJ gets you excited preflop because they look so good, but they lose very often postflop to an A, K, or Q. 

With AJo, you tend to call big bets preflop, but after you hit any hand post flop, you win the minimum and lose the maximum. For example, if you hit an Ace, you get stacked by AK and AQ and don’t make much from weaker hands like QQ, TT, and A5s. If you hit a Jack, you get stacked by AA, QQ, KK, and lose to a ton of draws that hit on the turn and river (the 4th and the 5th card, respectively). 

With JQo, you rarely beat your opponent when both you and him have a high pair. Yet, just like AJ, it lures you into calling a lot of big bets. 

So here you have it: my ranking of the most common poker hands after playing the game for about two years. On a final note, it is important to notice the importance of not playing marginally strong hands because they can lose you a lot of money against players who play the GTO Preflop range. For example, you should almost never play hands like A7o because it is an even worse trap hand than AJo when both you and your opponent hit an A. Yet, it doesn’t have the equity to make nut flushes without your opponent noticing like A7s could. 

Therefore, hands like A7o are simply out of our range. We’ll never play them, so we won’t have to worry about them. So, they’re not on our tier list.