What if you get Ace Queen as your Starting Poker Hands? Know how to play AQ in the game of Texas Holdem Poker. Your hand is formed by taking exactly two hole cards and exactly three community cards, and forming the best poker hand. In Omaha, starting hands are. Poker Blog from Replay Poker, the world's best play money poker site. Covering poker strategy, tactics, news, events, tournaments, for texas hold'em, omaha, and more! Learn how to play Omaha Poker (PLO). Use this beginner's guide to discover PLO rules, basic PLO strategy, and the best Omaha poker games to practice for free!

A combination is when you have a certain number of items in a set, and you want to know how many different ways you can choose a specific number of those items.

In mathematics, this is written in the format 'n choose r' meaning there are n options to choose from, and we want to pick r of them. The formula needed to evaluate a statement of this form is the following:

We'll be using this formula in our discussion of poker probabilities relating to hand combinations. However, if you aren't comfortable writing out the math on your own, you can still use a calculator to find the value of combinations. Typing '52 choose 4' into Google, for example, will tell you how many different ways you can be dealt a four-card starting hand in Omaha.

Five Card Poker Hands

In games like five card stud and five card draw, we need to be able to figure out the chance of getting a certain hand by just being dealt five random cards.

The following chart shows the chance of being dealt these hands right off the bat by listing the number of combinations possible for each poker hand rank.

To find the total number of combinations of a five card hand, you'll do 52 choose 5 as follows:

You divide the number of combinations of a single hand by this value to get the chance of being dealt that hand with five random cards from a deck. This will tell you how likely you are to be dealt a specific hand which is an exceptionally important piece of information in games that use five cards.

Seven Card Poker Hands

Playing with seven card poker hands is very interesting, and this is what happens with holdem and Omaha (2 hole cards + 5 community cards), the two most popular games played today.

In these games, poker combinations and math are less about knowing the chances of being dealt a specific hand but about using these ideas to figure out the probability of your opponents having certain holdings.

Unique and Non-unique Starting Hands in Omaha

If you have the hand A♠A♥K♠K♥ in Omaha, that's known as a distinct or unique combination of cards because there's only one way you can be dealt that hand. However, if you just say that you were dealt AAKK double-suited, then there could be several different ways of being dealt that particular hand, and you would have to figure out how many different unique combinations there were by using two combinations of suits like so:

Each of these six examples are unique combinations because there are no other ways to be dealt the hand. The reason that unique combinations are so important is that they help you to find the probability of actually being dealt those hands as you're about to see.

Finding the Probability of Texas Holdem Hands Using Combinations

In Texas holdem, you have the best opportunities for using the poker combinations probability to increase your chances of winning because it's how you evaluate what your opponents might be holding. You can also use it to determine how often you will be dealt certain hands.

Hand reading in Texas Holdem requires you to know the relative chances of your opponent having different hands in different situations.

For example, how many ways can you be dealt AA? Look at the possible combinations of suits to figure this out: spade-club, spade-heart, spade-diamond, club-heart, club-diamond and heart-diamond. That's a total of six. Remember that A♠A♥ is the same thing as A♥A♠, so they aren't counted as two different hands.

To figure out how many total ways you can be dealt a starting hand, you'll calculate the combination 52 choose 2 to find the total number of possible starting hands, and then you do the division to find the chances of being dealt AA:

So there's a 0.45 percent chance of being dealt AA, and this process can be repeated for any pocket pair since they will all have an equal chance of being dealt.

There are 16 ways to be dealt a non-pair hand, and you can use the same process as above to find that there's a 1.21 percent chance of being dealt a specific one.

Getting the Right Starting Hands

Omaha Poker Strategy Starting Hands Chart

Your Omaha Hi Lo Preflop strategy is based on your starting hands. Even though there is nothing you can (legally) do to “get” the right starting hands, choosing which you play and which you muck will make the difference between being a profitable Omaha Hi Lo player and one which is waiting for reload bonuses to be offered so they can top up their account.

Below we have divided potential Omaha Hi Lo starting hands into “Good”, Viable” and “Speculative”, but it cannot be stressed strongly enough that the value of each varies according to the skills of the players seated at the table with you and your position in the order of betting.

Good Omaha Hi Lo Starting Hands

Good Omaha Hi Lo starting hands are those in which all four hole cards work well together and have plenty of potential for catching a pot-winning hand on the flop. Double suited hands (where the four cards are comprised of two of one suit and two of another), hands which hold three cards to a nut straight or nut wheel (Ace-Five straight) and cards with high-value paired cards are the best to be dealt.

A hand such as A♥ 2♦ Q♥ K♦ has the possibility to catch a heart or diamond flush, top straight or bottom straight and can be bet with strength from any position around the table. If this hand flops the nut straight (Ace-Ten), it will also have the potential to improve in value to the nut flush or a Full House following the Turn and River.

Omaha Hi Lo Viable Starting Hands

Viable starting hands would include those with three Lo cards and one other Hi card which compliments one or more of the three cards of Lo value. Although viable, these sorts of hands should be played with care from early position and only strongly from late position or when you have connected with the board after the Flop. If however, you meet opposition from a player who you have identified as only playing the strongest possible Omaha Hi Lo starting hands, you should be prepared to fold.

Omaha Poker Strategy Starting Hands Reaching

Hands similar to A♥ 2♦ 3♣ K♥ would be considered viable to play in most circumstances, as a player has a good opportunity of making the best Lo hand while still having options for the best flush or straight draw. A hand such as this which does not improve on the flop (for example 8♦ 9♣ 10♠) should be discarded immediately.

Omaha Hi Lo and Speculative Hands

There is only really one justifiable reason to play speculative hands at Omaha Hi Lo and that is to get caught bluffing (see Winning Hi Lo Secrets to find out more about why you would want to get caught). However, a common mistake is for inexperienced players to limp into pots with speculative hands and, if you catch a player doing this, you can tag them up as somebody who should be taken on when you are dealt a “good” Omaha Hi Lo starting hand even when the weaker player has position on you.

Omaha Poker Strategy Starting Hands

Cards such as A♠ 3♦ 7♣ 8♦ look far better than what they actually are. The speculative player needs a Deuce and two other Lo cards with a value of Four or higher among the community cards to be assured of having the best Lo Omaha hand and, should he or she find a flop full of diamonds or three cards which complete their straight, it is likely that another player – with a good or viable hand – will have a better Hi Omaha hand.