Poker Starting Hands Chart: How to Read One and When to Ignore It
Level 6 · Lesson 3 of 64 min read
How is a starting hands chart laid out?
Ranks run along the top and down the side, so every square names two ranks. This is the top-left corner of the grid, which continues down to 2-2:
| A | K | Q | J | T | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | AA | AKs | AQs | AJs | ATs |
| K | AKo | KK | KQs | KJs | KTs |
| Q | AQo | KQo | QJs | QTs | |
| J | AJo | KJo | QJo | JJ | JTs |
| T | ATo | KTo | QTo | JTo | TT |
Suited hands — two cards of one suit, like A♥ K♥ — carry an s and sit above the diagonal. The same two ranks offsuit carry an o and sit below it. In this shorthand T is the ten, so ATs reads as ace-ten suited.
Those 169 squares are 1,326 two-card combinations once suits are counted separately, so the squares are not equally likely. How often each kind is dealt:
Any pocket pair — about 5.9%
Two suited cards — about 23.5%
Two aces, the one square in the corner — about one hand in 220
The grid shows where a hand sits, not how good it is. The ranking itself lives in best starting hands.
What does one square tell you to do?
A square carries an action, not a rating: raise, call, or fold. Charts encode it as color, and each one prints its own key, so read the key before the grid.
There is no square for limping. Where a hand is playable a chart tells you to raise it, and where it is not, to fold.
How do you read one at a table?
Find the higher rank along the top and the lower rank down the side. Take the upper square if your two cards share a suit, the lower one if they do not.
On a button chart that square is an open. On a chart for an early seat it is a fold. Nothing about the cards changed, only the seat did. A full chart is a stack of grids indexed by poker position, not one sheet.
Quick check
You are dealt K♦ 9♦. Which square of the chart is it?
Why a chart is a starting point, not a rulebook
Every published chart is built for one table size and one stack depth, and the common ones assume nine players and a deep stack. Neither assumption is printed where you will look for it.
Vibe Poker deals three-handed. With two opponents instead of eight, hands a nine-player chart folds are ordinary opens. K♦ 9♦ above is one of them, and you enter far more pots than any full-ring chart shows. Follow a nine-player chart at a three-handed table and you will fold correct hands for months.
Stack depth moves the answer the same way. A few blinds deep, the chart is replaced by a push/fold list, and it stops being the right tool.
A chart also ends at the flop. It says which hands to enter a pot with and nothing about how to play them once cards are on the table.
Any label on a chart you don't recognize is in the poker terms glossary.
Frequently asked questions
Is a range chart the same as a starting hands chart?
Same grid, different job. A starting hands chart tells you what to play. A range chart shades the same squares to show what an opponent could be holding after the actions they have taken. That makes it a reading tool rather than a set of instructions.
Keep learning
The worst hand in poker and how to play pocket aces — the squares at the top and the bottom of the chart.