When nobody has entered the pot and it is your turn, you have only two choices, raise or fold (why you shouldn’t limp in). The next question is: which hands are good enough to raise?
When beginners pick hands, they usually look at what a hand “might make”: there is an ace, so maybe a pair of aces; the two cards share a suit, so maybe a flush; the two cards are close together, so maybe a straight. Each of these three reasons is true, and they are also the three most common traps.
They all share the same flaw: they hit less often than you think, and when they do hit, they are often not the best hand.
1. Small suited hands: the suit adds only a little
Hands like 8-3 suited and 7-2 suited have exactly one thing going for them: the suit.
First, how hard a flush is to make. Take two suited cards all the way to the river and you make a flush about 6% of the time, roughly once every fifteen or sixteen hands; the flop handing you a flush outright happens less than 1% of the time. The rest of the time, more than nine times in ten, what you are holding is an 8 and a 3.
So the suit does little for this hand. Put 8-3 up against a randomly dealt hand, play it to the river without folding, and in simulation the suited version wins about 41% of the time and the offsuit one about 37%: being suited adds only around 3 percentage points, and neither version wins even half the time.
Even when it does hit, there is a second problem: 8-3 makes a low flush in that suit. When someone else has made a flush too, yours is often the smaller one, and that is exactly when the pot is at its biggest.
The suited hands that really have value are the ones that are the best hand when they hit. When an ace and another card of the same suit (say A-7 suited) make a flush, nobody else’s flush is bigger; a suited connector (say 7-6 suited) can make a straight as well as a flush, so it has two ways to hit. 8-3 suited has neither.
2. Weak aces: holding an ace is not holding a big hand
With hands like A-7 and A-4 offsuit, the attraction is the ace.
On its own it really is not bad: in simulation, A-7 offsuit beats a randomly dealt hand nearly six times in ten. The problem is that the players who put chips into the pot with you are not holding random hands, and the earlier their seat, the less random they are: in RushCraft’s default ranges, every ace that opens from UTG has a ten or better beside it, apart from A-5 suited.
When two aces collide, it comes down to the other card (the full hand rankings explains how that comparison works). In simulation, A-7 wins less than three times in ten against A-J. And the most expensive case is not missing the flop, it is hitting an ace on it: you have a pair of aces and find it hard to let go, while your opponent has a pair of aces too, with a bigger second card. The post on position and range walks through exactly this with a hand of A-6 offsuit.
3. Gapped hands: the wider the gap, the fewer straights you can make
With hands like 9-7, 8-5 and J-8, the attraction is that the cards are “close enough to make a straight”.
A straight is five cards in a row. The wider the gap between your two cards, the fewer ways there are to fit both of them into the same straight:
| Hand | Cards in between | Straights that use both cards |
|---|---|---|
| 9-8 | 0 | 4 (5 to 9, 6 to 10, 7 to J, 8 to Q) |
| 9-7 | 1 | 3 |
| 9-6 | 2 | 2 |
| 9-5 | 3 | 1 |
Every extra card in the gap takes away one way to hit. If the cards are offsuit, there is no flush to make either, only straights that keep getting fewer.
That is why, in RushCraft’s default ranges, offsuit gapped hands where both cards are 9 or lower (9-7, 8-5, 7-4 offsuit and the like) are not opened from any of the five positions; neither is J-8 offsuit.
4. How position changes the answer
These three kinds of hands are not unplayable forever; the later your seat, the more playable they become. In RushCraft’s default opening ranges:
- Small suited hands: of the suited hands UTG opens, the smallest is 9-8, apart from A-5; even a suited connector like 5-4 waits until MP; 8-3 and 7-2 suited are not opened even from the button
- Weak aces: A-7 offsuit is opened only from the button and the small blind. Make the same hand suited and it opens from MP already, and what it gains is the kind of flush from section 1, the best hand when it hits
- Gapped hands: suited one-gappers (9-7, 8-6, 7-5, 6-4) start opening from the cutoff, suited two-gappers (8-5, 7-4, 6-3) only from the button; small offsuit gapped hands are not opened from any position
The later your seat, the fewer players are left behind you, and the smaller the chance that one of them holds a hand that dominates yours; after the flop you are also more often the last to act, so when you hit something middling, the pot is easier to control. Both points are covered in the post on position and range and why good players love the button; which hands to play from each of the five positions is in the preflop range charts.
5. How to choose instead: first ask whether a hit is the best hand
When you pick a hand, do not start with “what might this make”. Ask two things instead:
- When it hits, is it usually the best hand? A-K making a pair of aces, a pocket pair making three of a kind, an ace and a suited card making a flush: when these hit, they are usually the best hand; A-7’s pair of aces and 8-3’s flush often are not
- Does it have two ways to hit? A suited connector can make a straight or a flush; an offsuit gapped hand has only one way, and a narrow one
A hand that cannot answer yes to either question is a hand to play less. The earlier your seat, the stricter you need to be.
6. When the exceptions apply
You are in the big blind, facing an open from a late position. The big blind already has one big blind in, so another 1.5 sees the flop, and late-position opening ranges are wide to begin with, so your A-7 is not necessarily dominated. That is why RushCraft’s default big blind calling range against a button open includes A-7 offsuit, 7-4 suited and even 9-7 offsuit (section 3 of the preflop range charts). This post is about choosing a hand when you are first in; big blind defence uses different charts, covered in the big blind (BB) post.
Several players have already limped in front of you. With more players in, suited connectors and small pairs become relatively easier to play, while high-card hands like A-7 offsuit that rely on making one pair get worse; spot 6 in the complete guide to preflop play points in exactly this direction.
An ace, a shared suit, a possible straight: each reason is true on its own, but they answer “what might this make”, not “once it is made, is it the best hand”. These three kinds of hands are most expensive not when they miss, but when they hit and are still not the best.
The fastest way to learn which hands open from which seat is to practise: the preflop trainer gives you a position and a hand for every question, tells you right after you answer whether that hand is in the opening range for that seat, and lets you open the full range grid to compare.
Read this next: once you can pick hands when nobody has entered the pot, the next spot is someone having already raised — why not to call in the middle covers why calling there is one of a beginner’s costliest habits, and how to replace it with a re-raise or a fold.
If the rules still have gaps, or you want to know what to read next, go back to what Texas Hold’em is; it ends with a map that puts every guide on this site in order.