Texas hold 'em starting hands

There are 1326 distinct possible combinations of two hole cards from a standard 52-card deck in hold 'em, but since suits have no absolute value in this poker variant, many of these hands are identical in value before the flop.

That is, Some notable theorists and players have created systems to rank the value of starting hands in limit Texas hold'em.

As a general rule, books on Texas hold'em present hand strengths starting with the assumption of a nine or ten person table.

While most combinations have a nickname, stronger handed nicknames are generally more recognized, the most notable probably being the "Big Slick" - Ace and King of the same suit, although an Ace-King of any suit combination is less occasionally referred to as an Anna Kournikova, derived from the initials AK and because it "looks really good but rarely wins.

"[4][5] Hands can be named according to their shapes (e.g., paired aces look like "rockets", paired jacks look like "fish hooks"); a historic event (e.g., A's and 8's - dead man's hand, representing the hand held by Wild Bill Hickok when he was fatally shot in the back by Jack McCall in 1876); many other reasons like animal names, alliteration and rhyming are also used in nicknames.