I guess my least favorite “good” starting hold’em hand is JJ. It LOOKS so nice, and LOSES so often, dagnabbit! I even hesitate to play it heads-up.
What do you guys think? Is there a worse one?
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AK, AJ, JJ
JJ is not a bad hand, really, if you play it like a normal hand. A lot of players open shove it preflop, which I think is a mistake a lot of the time. You can expect to face overcards on the flop a lot of the time, but it is playable. You can jam it preflop when short stacked, but in early position its less valuable playing that way.
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33 cause it is difficult to play in most situations…
I get beat by 33 more than probably any other hand. Every time I flop top pair and there’s a 3 on the board, it seems like my opponent has a set.
Ace/King is a curse. If they’re suited (especially spades for some reason) then great, because RP will give me a flush if I get ace and king of spades, but if not, ace/king makes me bet but gives me nothing all the time. A little while ago, I decided to always fold ten/five and, looking back, see no reason to reconsider.
AK can be tricky, because if you put in a big bet preflop and then if you miss, your opponent may have a good guess at what you have. The real strength of AK is over 5 common cards, so if you can’t call a flop bet, its power is weakened.
I like to use AK as a bluff hand. For example early in MTT when the blinds are low, sometimes just limp in and see what happens. If it goes limp, limp, limp, then comes to the BB who raises, you can reraise and see of the limpers with plenty of money in the pot, so improved odds. Your biggest enemies are AA and KK, but watch out for QQ and JJ if they make trips on the flop.
Lets say you are in early position with AK and you get heads up with JJ in the BB. If an A or K comes on the flop, he is going to be wary, and may make a small bet to see if you are ready to fold, or if you fear the A or the K… If a Q comes, he is going to fear AQ even though he is ahead. If no overcards to his JJ come, he is going to try to take the pot right there, and you would not have the odds to call a bet.
The advantage of limping in with AK is also that if you do hit an A or K on the flop, you may be out-kicking someone with an inferior A or K, and they will not suspect this since you limped. Some big pots may be won if they do not pair their kicker. If they make two pairs on the river, they will usually swap from calling mode to betting or raising mode and it will be apparent that they have something better than top pair.
On a final table AK is a good preflop shoving hand. You may take down the blinds, and even if you are called it is not too bad against most pocket pairs. The combined odds of the rest of the table folding and you winning horse race are strongly in your favor. It is a good shove against the second or third stacks in the BB as they will not want to lose their position when they are waiting for smaller stacks to go out, and if you are a small stack, they will not want you to double up at their expense.
That’s easy. Just fold your hand any time a 3 comes on the flop.
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QJ offsuit is a hand I hate to play cause whenever you get top pair your always outkicked. I think I lose more money with QJ than 72 offsuit. However, this isn’t really a premium hand and I would say that deepstacked, the middle pairs like 88s are really hard to deal with postflop because the’re overcards a huge percentage of the time and they seem tough to play, but pocket pairs with overcards in general are really tough to play in my opinion because you have to call them on the flop and if the opponent bets again on the turn it is pretty much a lose-lose situation.
There’s three ways to play jacks, all of them are wrong
all of them on online poker sites.
AA is the one to love hate.
It only took one day to take me to the river again…
AA again
My worst starting hand is A,K (offsuit or otherwise). I get so happy when I see it. Then realize how many chips I’ve lost going all in on this hand that can be beat by a simple pair of two’s.
~mark 
(or the suited pair of Craig’s/a hand that will smile at you while taking a huge stack of your chips/love you Craig…hehe
Q 10 for me. Looks so appealing to the eye at first, but it’s easy to get sucked in with it.
The worst starting hand, if you can call it a starting hand, is King 9 unsuited. You can only make a straight using both cards if you hit a gutshot draw. A pair of kings on the flop is pretty useless, because most people who play Kings will have a higher kicker.
If you find an opponent who likes to call pre-flop raises with King 9, you should let them stick around and tell them “nice hand” if they win a pot with it.
Any hand with a 9 in it is useless.
A9 cannot make a straight with both cards, but is okay to play blind versus blind.
Queen 9 is like King 9 but worse.
Jack 9 is okay sometimes, but you will lose out when an opponent has a Broadway straight.
Ten 9 can be playable sometimes, preferably suited.
99 is very vulnerable to overcards on the flop.
98 and 97 are okay as long as you get the top end of the straight draw.
My strategy with pocket pairs is as follows:
With aces kings and queens raise preflop and try to take down the pot on the flop before somebody out draws you on a later street. On replay poker this may take more than a pot size bet.
Alternatively I have had some success in limping in with large pairs. You may have to surrender some pots when you are outdrawn, but if you hit a set on the flop and slow play it, you may make a boat, which will come as rather a surprise to opponents who like to bluff with huge overbets on the river, especially if you have a timid table image.
With middle pocket pairs, try to see the flop as cheap as possible. If you are going to call somebody else’s preflop raise, then consider the stack sizes and how many other callers there are. It is better for you if there are three or preferably full people in the pot, nice players with Aces and Kings may block each other, and you are getting better odds. It is usually profitable to raise or call if you are in a blind versus blind situation.
With small pairs from 77 to 22, I would raise the blinds, and sometimes raised from early position if I think I can isolate one caller. With a small pair you can bluff one player off the pot, but with more than one player it becomes much harder to ignore overcards on the flop. Sometimes it is helpful to imagine what your opponent has in their hand. If they are a loose caller, they will often fold to your bet if there is an ace on the flop. And if they do have an Ace and call your bet, then maybe you make your set on the turn and stack them.
If you do happen to flop a set, particularly with the higher pocket pairs like Jacks and Tens, it may be profitable to play them cheaply down to the river and see if the board pairs and gives you the nuts. It is surprising how often people will call off a maximum bet without having the nuts. For example they hit a flush on the river.
Occasionally your small pocket pair will flop quads. Potentially another pocket pair could run out with quads on the turn and River, but usually it is a question of milking your opponent for as many chips as possible.
Another thing that you never see in books is that if you have a pair of pocket 3s, you may both make a wheel straight and hold cards that will block a player holding an Ace from doing the same.
These strategies seem to work OK on Replay Poker, but are not warrantied for use in real money games or casino games.
That’s usually the theory but on Replay Poker all rational play is gone. I heard 72o is the all in norm 
I have to admit that I love the Jacks.
If you read any kind of expert books or articles, you will find that it is generally assumed that all hands are evaluated on whether they are ahead on the flop. On RP you nearly always have to play hands down the the river, so drawing hands–hands that play well post flop, are at a premium. For that reason 10 9 is probably more valuable than A 10, because it can flop an open ended straight draw.
Normally in a heads up contest A 10 would obviously be the favorite against 10 9, since it is the dominating hand, but in an environment where there are usually 3, 4, or 5 players in a pot, the odds are reversed. Even AA is no better than a 50% favorite.
However the art of winning chips in RP is complex. Was just looking at the membership profiles, and it seems to me that the pyramid has a very wide base and a very narrow tip. The lowest ranked active players I could find were ranked around 367,000, but with only a million chips or maybe a few million, you could already be in the top 20,000. The higher up the pyramid you go, the harder it becomes to win more chips, because you are playing against winners. However clearly it IS possible to go from 2,5000 chips to a billion chips if you can crack the codes.
7 2 unsuited is generally considered to be the worst starting hand in poker, but in a five-way pot, it is probably as good as any to go all-in. At least there is less competition at the bottom end of the scale, and you are equally likely to flop two pairs or trips as with AK. AK is a great hand heads-up, but in a five-way pot, its loses its potency rapidly. I would certainly go all-in preflop with 7-2 in certain circumstances, for example, I am small blind, it is folded to me, blinds are large enough to be worth winning, I have large stack, BB has small stack, and based on previous observation BB is a timid player who will most likely fold to a jam.
Nice post 