Almost all poker games place their hands at similar rates scaling from high to low. Poker hand ranking relies on the probabilities of you getting them. The least-likely hands being the highest-ranked, the most demanded hands are the lowest-ranked hands. In terms of identical poker hands, the rank depends on the player with the highest values. The player upholding the stronger hands gets to decide the better hand rank.
You can memorize the starting hands using mnemonics. Mnemonic is a popular memory device used in poker. However, relying on mnemonic devices will prove only to be your weakness. You cannot use memory devices on the table of a poker game. It’s best to learn your way through the principles of the best poker moves at starting hands.
Poker Hand Ranks
Let’s look at the standard hand ranks, placed from the highest hand rank to the lowest.
- Royal Flush
- Straight Flush
- Four of A Kind
- Full House
- Flush
- Straight
- Three-of-A-Kind
- Two Pair
- Pair
To participate in a game of poker requires you to be thorough with this hierarchy. As complex as this hierarchy is, new players may find it overwhelming to remember it precisely in order.
As such, let’s learn a few of the ways out there to help you remember the starting hand strategy.
Mnemonic Devices
Mnemonics are popular memory devices used by a vast crowd to remember complex information. These devices make memorizing easy and straightforward. Therefore, you can use such mnemonics to remember the starting hand strategy as well.
It involves arranging the series of words by taking the first letter of each word and making up a random sentence that is easier to remember. However, the challenge is to transform hand rankings into words. You can’t understand the concept of poker better by only memorizing the hand orders. It would be best if you were thorough with the basic hand strategy to understand the poker strategy better.
For instance, let’s take the number series of 0, 1, 2, 3 for the low-value poker hands. 0 meaning “high-rank,” 1 for “one pair,” 2 for “two pair,” and # meaning “three-of-a-kind.”
In terms of high-value poker hands, let’s consider the number of letters in each word defining the ranks. 5 for flush for the five letters, 9 for full-house, 11 for four-of-a-kind, 13 for a straight flush, and 18 for a royal straight flush.
Combining both, we get the mnemonic to be: 0 – 1 – 2 – 3 / 5 – 9 – 11 – 13 – 18.
Endnotes
Poker is complex for beginners. Using mnemonics may help you approach the game in a relaxed manner. However, besides using mnemonic devices to help you get the strategy, you could also apply other methods to memorize the starting hand strategy.
There is the rote memorization method, which is quite common in your everyday life. You could also try hand evaluation diagrams or allow yourself frequent exposure in the live poker games until you finally get it. Either this or that way, you must set with the basics of the starting hand hierarchy.
