Tight means playing only the best starting hands…
At a full ring poker table (9 players) a good strategy is playing the only the top 15% of hands that are dealt to you. Pretty boring, but yes you should be folding the rest.
(personally I don’t do that but that is pretty common advice if you were to read up on poker strategy and especially so for beginner-novice level poker and at micro limit levels – like in our little £1 game at AFCPoker).
But what are the top 15% of hands (which equates to the best starting hands)?
Well, there are 169 possible starting hands (though there are 13 cards, it’s not as simple as 13×13 (because there are four suits) but ironically works out to be the same figure: 169 – which is also the total count of 13 pocket pairs, 13 × 12 x 1 / 2 = 78 suited hands and likewise 78 unsuited hands (13 + 78 + 78 = 169).
So if we take the top 15% of those 169 possibilities, that gives us 25.35 so as you can’t play .35 of a hand, we’re looking at only playing the top 25 hands.
So what are the top 25 hands in Texas Hold-em poker?
Difficult to say for sure – as poker is a situational game, the fully correct answer would require us to look at each hand and how it performed in different situations against competing hands. A realistic scenario in a 9-handed game would involve some of the players folding due to them having weak hands. There is then the consideration of position, playing a strong hand in a weak position is a very different situation to playing a strong hand on the button, how you play the hand, which card comes out on the board and how the hand evolves through the different rounds of betting etc etc etc.
So whilst we can look at what some of the undisputed best hands in poker are, such as paired or suited picture cards, to say with certainty what the best 25 hands are we need to specify in which situation we are judging them to be the best hands.
Here is a list of the top 25 hands ranked based on a no fold’em philosophy, assuming all nine opponent hands will play through to the showdown. In real poker, this scenario will almost never occur, as betting and raising thins the proverbial herd and creates two way heads up showdowns for the most part, along with occasional three way or otherwise multiple way showdowns:
- Bullets (A pair of Aces)
- A pair of Kings
- A pair of Queens
- Ace King suited
- A pair of Jacks
- Ace Queen suited
- King Queen suited
- Ace Jack suited
- King Jack suited
- A pair of Tens
- Ace King off
- Ace 10 suited
- Queen Jack suited
- King Ten suited
- Queen Ten suited
- Jack Ten suited
- A pair of 9s
- Ace Queen off
- Ace 9 suited
- King Queen off
- A pair of 8s
- King 9 suited
- 10 9 suited
- Ace 8 suited
- Queen 9 suited
This gives an idea of what the best hands are statistically when simplifying the conditions (i.e. everybody plays every hand).
Here is another list which actually equates to 32 top hands, I’m not going to say ‘the’ top hands because we’ve already established, as poker is situational, what constitutes the best hand in any given moment depends on lots of factors including position, stack size, number of players in the hand, current bet or raise status, and your read on a particular player.
Though this list and the one above shows a small percentage of the 169 possible hands which you could play to play tight, you will and should eventually play every single hand of those 169 possibilities.
- Any pair (count em, that’s 13 of them) plus:
- Ace King suited
- Ace King off
- Ace Queen suited
- Ace Queen off
- Ace Jack suited
- Ace Jack off
- Ace Ten suited
- King Queen suited
- King Queen off
- King Jack suited
- King Jack off
- King Ten suited
- Queen Jack suited
- Queen Jack off
- Queen Ten suited
- Jack Ten suited
- Ten 9 suited
- 9 8 suited
- 8 7 suited
That’s 32 out of a possible 169 hands, so actually more like the top 19% of possible hands rather than the top 15% but it gives an idea of what kind of hands you should be playing if you want to be playing ‘tight’ poker. Note, hands like Ace 9, King 9, Queen 9 and Jack 9 suited don’t make the list, neither do Ace 10, King 10, Queen 10 and Jack 10 unsuited.
Though statistically if everyone plays low pairs don’t do too well, in reality, played correctly, any pair can be a strong hand which is why all pairs are included in this list.
So these two lists give a rough idea of which hands you could play if you wanted to play tight poker, and how few hands you should actually be playing (in theory).
Be careful though – only playing tight won’t always guarantee success because if you only play premium hands and that becomes well known, you are giving too much information to your opponents – they will know you only play premium hands and more opponents won’t even bother getting into pots with you – you need to mix it up a bit.