Go back to the awesome Texas Hold'em Strategy.Half the battle of winning at poker begins with the knowledge how to play your starting hands. In my opinion, the real value of this table is being able to see how different starting hands can be grouped together and ranked based on their value before the flop.įor other useful charts and tables, see the odds charts page from the Texas Hold'em tools section. Sklansky and Malmuth hand rankings evaluation.Īlthough it's a very popular hand group rankings table, it's not going to do you too much good to learn the whole thing off by heart. If you're really after a starting hand strategy guideline, try the Chen Formula. Nonetheless it's interesting to see how specific starting hands compare to one another based on their preflop value. So really there is not a lot to take away from this table from a purely strategic perspective. You should avoid using strict guidelines and set rules as much as possible during play.Like any starting hand strategy, it would have its flaws.It would be difficult to remember and implement.Unfortunately, I'm not going to work out any guidelines for you for the NL Hold'em game using this table because: In their book, Sklansky and Malmuth provide some in-depth guidelines for starting hand strategy in limit Texas Hold'em using this table. The rough idea is that a hand in one group has roughly the same value and can be played the same way preflop as any other hand in that group. Starting with the strongest set of hands that you can be dealt in group 1, the hands get progressively weaker working down the table until the virtually unplayable hands in group 9. The Sklansky and Malmuth starting hands table groups together certain hands in Texas Hold'em based on their strength. The table is a general ranking of hands in Texas Hold'em. What is the Sklansky and Malmuth starting hands table? This is a strategy book for limit Hold'em, but the starting hand groups do have some practical use in no limit Hold'em. This table comes from the book Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth. Starting Hand Selection: Chen Formula : Sklansky Starting Hand Groups The Sklansky & Malmuth starting hands table.

Starting texas holdem hands