Understanding poker combinations allows you to define your opponents’ ranges more accurately and make better plays across all streets.
In order to be able to play a winning strategy, you need to understand how many poker combinations there are in every spot and how they interact with the board.
In this guide, we are going to teach you what poker combos are, how to count them, and how to make math-based decisions.
What Are Poker Combinations
Poker combinations, also known as poker combos, refer to all possible variations of two hole cards that a player can have in a given poker situation.
The game is played with a deck of 52 cards that are broken up into 13 ranks and four suits, with each card represented once across each suit. Each player is dealt two cards to start a hand in Texas Hold’em.
In total, that makes up for 1,326 poker combinations, as each card can be combined with each other card in the deck to make up a starting hand.
These combinations are best represented on a poker hand grid, which depicts every possible starting hand in poker.
However, the grid only has 169 spaces, as each possible hand is only listed on the grid one time. Yet, there are multiple combinations of each poker hand.
In fact, there are exactly:
- 6 combinations of each pocket pair
- 12 combinations of each offsuit hand
- 4 combinations of each suited hand
For example, if you think about a pair of Aces, you will realize that there are exactly six ways a player can have it. The exact combos are AsAh, AsAd, AsAc, AhAd, AhAc, AdAc. The same goes for every other pair in the game.
When it comes to suited hands, each card can only combine with one other card to make a suited combo. For example, AsKs, AhKh, AdKd, AcKc. This makes for four combos of AK suited, and there are four combos of every other suited hand as well.
With the same logic, each offsuit card can combine with three other cards to form an offsuit combo. For example AsKh, AsKd, AsKc, etc. This makes for 12 combos of every offsuit hand in the deck.
In total, there are exactly 78 combinations of pocket pairs, 312 combinations of suited hands, and 936 combinations of offsuit hands.
While this may sound like some fun poker trivia that has little in-game application, the reality is quite different, as there are many ways in which poker combinations can help you build a better poker strategy.
Poker Combinations and Ranges
So why exactly do poker combinations matter, and how can you use them? Mainly speaking, poker combos are used to pinpoint your opponents’ hand ranges more accurately.
A poker range is a collection of all the possible hands a player can have in a given scenario, given the way a hand was played.
While hand ranges are generally determined in terms of all the possible poker hands, specific card combinations can help you pinpoint a player’s range in even more detail.
At the start of the hand, you can make broad assumptions, such as a player opening from an early position having all the combos of AA, KK, and AK, and no combos of hands like J3 or 72.
However, as the hand gets into the later streets, you can start making some more specific reads on the situation.
For instance, on a board with two spades, a player who calls a big raise is very unlikely to have offsuit combinations of certain hands, but likely to have those same combos in spades.
The number of hand combinations changes with each card that is dealt, potentially allowing you to make even more detailed assumptions.
For example, on the board of AsJd7cAc, the number of AA combos is reduced to just one, while the number of AK combos is reduced from a total of 16 to just eight.
The two Aces on the board make it much less likely your opponent has an ace in their hand at all, which allows you to define their range in more detail and discard certain hand combos from it.
Of course, these are just some very basic examples of how poker combinations can help you put your opponents on ranges that are more accurate and how you can build a better overall poker strategy by counting card combos.
Card Removal and Blockers
We already discussed how the cards on the board impact the possible poker combinations players can have.
However, the cards you hold in your hand also have an impact on your opponent’s potential combos. These cards are called blockers, and they play a major part in creating a balanced poker strategy.
For example, imagine you are holding KQ on a King-high board that contains three spades. When facing a big river bet from your opponent, the suits of your cards will make a big difference.
Your Queen being a spade is going to mean your opponent is much less likely to have a flush, as it eliminates combinations like AsQs, QsJs, and QsTs from their range.
Conversely, if you have the Queen of hearts instead, your opponent is more likely to have a flush, as all the flush combos that include the Qs are still in their range.
This logic can be applied to every scenario where the cards you hold in your hand potentially block some of the best poker hands your opponent could have.
On the flip side of this coin, there are times when you hold cards that don’t interact very well with the board. These cards are called unblockers and they can be wonderful bluffing candidates.
For example, on a board like 8s9s4cKd, a hand like 5h3h is a very good bluffing candidate. This hand unblocks all of your opponent’s flush draws and straight draws, essentially allowing them to have more combos of these hands.
While these hands may call some turn bets, they will be forced to fold to your river bet when they miss, thus allowing you to win an even bigger pot.
Of course, all of this is not to say that blockers and unblockers should be used to play your hand a certain way 100% of the time. Instead, they are an extra piece of the puzzle that you can use when you are on the edge between calling/folding or betting/checking.
Card Bunching
Another concept worth mentioning when it comes to poker hand combinations is card bunching. This concept is not that widely mentioned, and its impact is small, but it can come into play.
Essentially, card bunching explains the phenomenon that happens when players in early positions fold their cards, especially at full-ring tables.
The more players fold, the more likely it is that there is a surplus of high cards in the deck. The reason, obviously, is that players tend to play high-card combinations and fold low-card combinations.
For example, if you are playing at a nine-handed table, and six players fold in front of you, it is very likely that some of them had deuces, treys, and fours in their hands. Conversely, they would have raised, or at least called, with quite a few of their Ace or King-high combos.
So, as more players fold their starting cards, high-card combinations gain in value, as it becomes that much more likely that the majority of high cards are still in the deck.
Poker Combinations in Practice
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Let’s take a look at an actual hand example and try to put poker combinations to use in-game.
In our example, we are playing $2/$5 poker at our local casino with an effective stack of $1,000. Our opponent opens from an early position to $15, we 3-bet to $55 from the dealer button, and they call.
When our opponent opened from an early position, we could already start dismissing quite a few hand combinations. After all, most players only open between 10% and 20% of hands from EP, so let’s assume our opponent opened 15%.
Once we put in the 3-bet, we can assume they would fold some of the hands in their range but also 4-bet some other ones.
For example, if they had a hand like AA, KK, or AKs, they would have likely 4-bet us at least a big percentage of the time, while they may have folded some of the weakest hands in their opening range.
Going to the flop, we see AsJc9c. Our opponent checks, and we go for a bet of $35 into the $117 pot, which our opponent calls.
This flop action didn’t tell us too much, but we can start discounting some combinations. For example, if the player had a pocket pair between 22 and 88, they would have likely folded even to our small bet on the flop.
The dealer puts out the turn card of 4h, which changes nothing about the board. Our opponent checks, and this time, we fire a bet of $135 into the $187 pot. Once again, our opponent calls.
At this point in the hand, we can pinpoint our opponent’s range much more closely. There are only so many poker combinations that allow him to play this way.
Let’s take a look at some of the value combinations our opponent could still have:
- AJs: 2 combos
- A9s: 2 combos
- A4s: 2 combos
- 99: 3 combos
- AQ: 12 combos
- AT: 12 combos
- AcXc: 6 combos
Note that all of these hands are quite strong on this board, and our opponent would have raised at least some of the combinations at some point.
For example, if they had 99 or AJs, they would have probably raised the flop or the turn at quite a high frequency. Hands like AT and AcXc are possible, but it is unclear if they would have raised all of those hands preflop.
This leaves very few combinations of strong hands. On the other hand, our opponent can also have any combination of two clubs that don’t have a pair, as well as four combos of QTs, which makes for an open-ended straight draw.
When the dealer puts out the innocuous 3d, and our opponent checks, we are left with a dilemma. Which hands should we continue betting with?
Obviously, we can bet once again with a hand like AA or JJ that’s basically the nuts, but what hands make for good bluffing candidates on this river?
Ideally, we want to have cards that don’t bluff any of our opponent’s drawing hands while at the same time not being strong enough to beat their showdown value hands.
A hand like TT with the Ts would be a bad bluffing candidate, as it blocks two combos of QTs, as well as hands like KcTc or Tc8c, which our opponent could potentially have.
On the other hand, a hand like 9h8h that we 3-bet before the flop would be a much better choice. This hand unblocks all of our opponent’s flush draws, as well as all of the QTs combos, which makes it much more likely our opponent has a hand like a weak Ace that can’t withstand another barrel.
Putting it All Together
Being able to identify the potential hand combos in your opponent’s range will be key to building a good poker strategy, but also remember not to get too fixated on concepts like blockers and unblockers when playing poker.
Instead, master these ideas and their implications in your study sessions, and try to find some good times to use them in-game to choose between two plays in a close spot.
On the other hand, make sure to avoid going too far with bluffing just because you hold a key unblocker or making hero calls just because you block your opponent from having the absolute nuts.
To learn more about basic concepts, make sure to check our poker cheat sheet and try our preflop poker charts.
