7 Poker Charts That Every Player Must Know

Many poker lovers use charts that help them when they play this game. Therefore, I decided to make a list of the essential poker charts that every poker player must know.

Poker is all about getting your math right. Therefore, it’s important to keep in mind that, by calculating your possibility of winning your hand, you’ll know how much is at stake.

By reading (and, hopefully, learning) these charts, you’ll have a better understanding of the game.

The charts should help you feel more comfortable when playing poker both online and in live games, as they depict essential information that many beginners often overlook.

Here’s a quick recap of what you can expect to learn in this article:

• Poker hand rankings
• Best starting hands in poker
• Common nicknames for starting and made hands
• Poker position names and abbreviations
• The starting hand chart
• How table stakes are named
• Poker pot odds chart

Poker Hand Rankings

This way, you’ll be able to have a better understanding of your hand. This is not a difficult chart to remember. After a couple of hands, you’ll get a hang of it and be able to make decisions without it.

Let’s take a look at the chart!

What You Should Take Into Account When Learning This Chart

The chart starts with the highest possible card in poker and is ranked towards the weakest poker hand, which is a pair. In case you don’t have a valuable hand, your highest hole card is something that counts.

Poker players who have the same high card will usually take the next highest card to determine the winner. If only two players remain and they have completely identical hands, then a tie is proclaimed and the pot is split. However, this doesn’t happen often.

Best Starting Hands in Poker

A starting hand in poker consists of the two hole cards you are given at the start of the hand. Although there are many possibilities at this point, you definitely need to have some insight into your odds from the very beginning.

Simply put, some starting hands are better than others, as it’s always better to get a pair of aces than a deuce and a ten unsuited. Therefore, let’s take a look at the chart of the best starting hands in poker.

What to Take Into Account

Although these are definitely the cards you want to see as your starting hand, don’t take this chart for granted. It’s up to you to assess the situation and try to understand whether a hand is worth playing.

Moreover, position plays an important role, and while the top five starting hands from this chart are playable under the gun, you might want to wait for mid/late positions for the hands that are in the second part of the chart.

Make sure to assess the situation and your opponents to determine whether a hand is worth playing, even if it is not on this list. Moreover, try not to play only these hands at one of our android poker sites, as you’ll come off as tight and passive, which is not always the best approach.

Common Nicknames for Starting and Made Hands

One of the ways to quickly learn poker is by getting the lingo right. Poker players love naming stuff related to the games, and naming hands is definitely their favourite. Therefore, I made a sort of an overview of starting and made hands and nicknames that players use for them.

This chart can help you follow the game smoother and get a better insight into poker strategies that are often discussed in various poker forums. Therefore, you will not have to google every single term if you spend some time studying this chart.

Here’s the chart of the best starting hands and their popular nicknames. The first listed nick is usually used the most.

As you can see, some are witty, some describe the way numbers look, and some are plainly random. One thing is certain — it’s fun to call hands by using these nicknames. I didn’t list all possible starting hands, but only the most popular ones, as you’re most likely to stumble upon their nicknames in use.

I decided not to list ALL nicknames for hands that are included in this chart, as some of them are derogatory. However, thanks to the PC culture, their use is slowly fading away.

Made Hand Nicknames

Some players love some made hands so much that they decided to give them a name. Here’s a short overview.

Poker Position Names and Abbreviations

A playing position affects your poker strategy a lot. By mastering position names in poker, you’ll be able to understand how each position affects your play. Once you understand how positions work and how to recognise them, you’ll be able to improve your overall poker success.

Therefore, let’s take a look at the full ring, which is a 10-max poker and see how each position is named.

If you play a six-max (short-handed) table, then MP2 is actually UTG, and MP3 is HJ. Other positions are named as in the rest of the chart — CO, BTN, SB, BB.

The Starting Hand Chart

The famous starting hand chart is perhaps the most important thing that you need to know from this article. It’s a chart that tells you which starting hands you are advised to play from certain positions.

Please don’t take this chart as definitive. You should consider it more like a guide on what you should do. However, it’s up to you to ultimately assess the situation at the table and decide whether to play the hand or not.

How Table Stakes Are Named

Various cash games and tournament poker events have different stakes. Online and live players have a specific naming system for these, which could be quite confusing if you’re new to poker. That’s why I decided to make a simple chart that will help you learn how No-Limit Hold’em table stakes are named.

The lowest stake tournament you can play is 2NL or $0.01/$0.02. However, that is available only on certain sites. The majority of sites offer 4NL as the lowest stake game. Everything below 50NL is usually called “micro stakes” poker by poker players.

If you want to play poker live, the competitions with the lowest possible stake you’ll be able to find are 100NL. However, most live games start at 200NL.

What players usually regard as high-stakes games on the web are those above 1000NL. In live poker games, high stake games start with 5000NL+.

Poker Pot Odds Chart

Finally, poker is all about getting the numbers right and calculating the right odds. If you want to calculate the equities that are required to make a profit or to decide on your value to bluff ratio, you might find the following chart useful

Final Thoughts

Learning to play poker is not that difficult. However, learning how to win is something that definitely needs continuous learning. It’s a trial and error process.

Mastering the game was far harder more than two decades ago when charts such as the ones presented in this article were hard to come by. Luckily, its majesty the Internet is filled with dozens of charts such as these that can make your game of poker both easier and more entertaining.

Ultimately, the goal of such charts is to help you avoid some of the common pitfalls and learn how to improve your game.

As you can see, some of the charts in the article are actually more about naming things rather than actually playing poker. That’s because we live in the era of online poker where, in order to be able to understand the game, one must understand the terms and slang related to it.

Hopefully, these charts will help you improve your overall success. But before you start studying each of them closely, you need to take one thing into account.

Many poker experts like to say that poker is like jazz. It’s based on improvisation. That said, these charts do not represent final instructions on what you must do. They are rather a basis for further learning that will help you know how to improvise when you sit to play the game.

FAQs

By looking at these charts, I’m certain that several questions popped up in your head. I understand that some of them might be confusing at first, so I will try to answer questions and clarify as much as possible. Therefore, let’s take a look at some of the most frequent questions regarding the charts.