Because you can only raise so much, one bet, in Limit, more people can stay in the pot. If you want someone out in No-Limit, you make it VERY expensive for him to stay in and see cards. This chart makes a lot of sense though, and is still quite useful for explaining how to play the top hands in no-limit hold ‘em.

As you can see, the top 3, AA, KK and QQ hold their value regardless of how many folks see the river card. These are the best hands in the game. Then we get to JJ.

JJ is listed as the 4th best hand in the game, but in a 2-player match up, it is equivalent to the 14th best hand. The way it played out in the computer is that if a player ended up one-on-one with JJ, and bet aggressively, they lost a LOT more than with QQ or higher.

But, with 6 people in, it realizes its rank as the number 4 hand. For 6 people to be in to see the river, I imagine the community cards were all runners and everyone was shooting for a straight. JJ is a good hand in that scenario, as the jack can be used as the low end of the highest straight or the high end of the middle straight.

The next hand is the big slick, AK, suited. This hand holds it’s value against up to 2 other opponents, but after that it starts to slip. This hand is helped greatly if there is the flush draw in its suit on the board, as you own the nuts in that case. As you will read below, the big slick is a bear of a hand.

The sixth ranked hand, ten-ten, is valued about the same as JJ. It loses its value in head to head, but if 5 or 6 are in, odds are the cards higher than it are spread out among the bettors, and TT is a pretty good hand. I will reveal below the “correct” way to play pocket pairs. Most importantly, JJ through 22.

The seventh hand, AQ s, never realizes its rank. And, as you can see, with a lot of people in, it’s a very bad hand. This hand’s strength is primarily in its suited aspect. It’s still an ace with a good kicker, but if there is a K on the board, you can guess you are behind in the hand.

With the regular slick, just AK, you can see that it is about twice as “bad” as the same cards suited. Up to a point. With 4 others in, AK suited only loses two spots. AK unsuited loses 16 spots all the way down to 26. That’s not good. It’s still a good hand, but only with a decent flop.

As you will notice, most of these hands get worse and worse the more people are in. The exceptions are TT and JJ. These hands get better with more people in. Do you want to play them against a crowd? Not really. Especially not if there are any higher cards on the board. I will explain how to play these top hands in depth in the following paragraphs.

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