Poker Math That Matters

72
When we look at the hand range selector in Pokerstove, we see
three different categories of hands: paired, unpaired suited and
unpaired off-suit (See Figure 5). This layout shows 169 possible
types of starting hands. 5 What is the probability of picking two
cards out of a deck and getting one of these types of starting
hands? Perhaps you would say it’s 1 out of 169. However, this
is not correct. There are different possibilities for each type of
hand, and this is important to understand when working with
ranges. Let’s take a look at it.
First, we’ll look at paired hands which are 22-AA. When you
have four cards, what is the number of different ways we can put
them together to create a unique combination (See Figure 6)?
Figure 6. Four cards can be combined to make six
unique combinations
5 There are actually 1326 unique combinations of starting hands in
hold’em. This range selector groups all suited and offsuit hands. So,
5♠6♠, 5♦6♦, 5♥6♥ and 5♣6♣ are all represented in 56s.