In poker, especially Texas Hold'em, one cannot truly understand their hand strength unless they understand hand rankings, seat position, board texture, tells and more. It's a game involving countless variables, so the more you learn about each one the more success you will have at your next cash game or tournament.
This guide will offer a rundown of all the variables and components that go into poker hand strength, and how to set yourself up for success at your next Hold'em game. We'll explain in detail how each hand ranks, then examine the finer points you'll want to master before diving into the high-roller rooms.
If we're moving too fast for you, feel free to check out our Texas Hold'em Poker Guide. We must understand the game as a whole before we can understand the hands we will see within the game. Here's a quick overview.
Texas Hold'em Poker Guide: How to play, rules, structure, and betting
Now let's dive into our guide to poker hand strength and tells, and get you better versed on how to recognize whether or not you're in a position of strength.
Poker hand strength: Complete Texas Hold'em hand rankings
Royal flush
Straight flush
Four of a kind
Full House
Flush
Straight
Three of a kind
Two pair
One pair
High card
For a more detailed explanation of each of these 10 hands, check out our comprehensive guide to poker hand rankings. We explain the odds of drawing each hand, tiebreakers, most common mistakes and misconceptions and more.
MORE: Full World Series of Poker 2025 schedule and events
Poker hand strength: Texas Hold'em hand selection
Hold'em — and poker in general — is far from a game of luck. It's also a game of strategy, wit, deceit and consistency. It's a psychological game, in that you must analyze your opponents and determine what they're thinking while also not giving away what's going on in your mind. It's also an exercise in self-discipline, as we often live and die with the hole cards we select to play.
Learn in free games, cheap money games and online practice games which hands work for you. Determine which hands you succeed with and which ones always give you problems. Many tight poker players won't go into a pot with anything less than a pocket pair, two face cards, or suited connectors. Others will play any starting hand that involves an Ace or King. Legendary poker player Doyle Brunson had tremendous luck with 10-2.
Whatever you do, don't fall in love with a starting hand. Your odds of winning shift with every round of betting in a hand, often negatively. If you feel your pocket Kings have drawn dead to an opponent with three of a kind or a flush, you have to cut your losses and get out. It's better to make a good fold than a costly call.
If you stay consistent with your hand selection and keep your play crisp and unpredictable, you will make up for the small loss before you know it.
MORE: Full World Series of Poker 2025 schedule and events
Poker hand strength: What are poker tells?
It's one thing to know which hands are the most powerful and the weakest. It's a whole other thing to understand which hands your opponents might be holding. Poker is a psychological game, with countless decisions to make in short periods of time based on perceived strength, confidence, deceit and more.
The term "tells" refers to physical, verbal or behavioral information or cues exhibited by a poker player. Tells are often displayed subconsciously, inadvertently revealing information about the strength of the player's hand or their intended actions.
Establishing a core understanding of poker tells can help you in a major way on the poker table. Once you start understanding how other people think and play, you have a better shot of knowing when you have them beat and when you can take advantage of them by capitalizing on their weaknesses.
MORE: How to win at Texas Hold'em, our guide to the best strategy and tips
Poker hand strength: Common tells to watch for
In order to learn things about a poker player's tells, we must first know what tells are and which ones to watch for during game play. Here's a rundown of the four main kinds of tells:
Physical tells
Physical tells include things like changes in posture, fidgeting, or nervous habits. Some people start talking with their hands more when they get a good hand, others start shaking or fumbling with their chips. Once you see a player giving off physical information, file it away so you know what made them act that way. Then, the next time you're going against that player in a hand, you have a better understanding of what their physical cues mean and how you can take advantage.
Verbal tells
Verbal tells can provide you with a wealth of information. Examples of verbal tells include changes in tone of voice, speech patterns, or even the way a player talks about their hand. The more someone speaks while playing a hand, the more you can ascertain from them. Take every chance your opponent gives you to make mental notes on their in-hand behaviors and tendencies.
Behavioral tells
Behavioral tells can be more subtle and under the radar, like how a player reacts to a bet or a flop, how they hold or look at their cards, or how they handle their chips. Take mental notes of how a person acts at each stage of the hands they play, and you might learn more than you think about their approach.
Reverse tells
When players become experienced, they may start intentionally trying to give off false tells or "reverse tells" to confuse their opponents into thinking they have them figured out. This is next-level poker warfare, almost like the cards version of reverse psychology.
Poker hand strength: Reading body language
The most important way to understand tells is learning how to read body language. People give off a wealth of information in card games without even saying anything. Here's a few ways to read a player just by observing them:
The eyes
They're not just the gateway to one's soul — they're also an open door to one's brain. Eyes can provide us with copious amounts of information on a player's hand strength, their confidence in their hand, and their intentions as bettors.
When one's eyes dart around, they might be nervous because their hand is weak or because they have just drawn an important card for their hand and can't contain their excitement. Those truths can also exist if one cannot make eye contact, or conceals their eyes by putting sunglasses on or looking up or down.
Fearful eyes can be easy to detect, too. Fear, anxiety and trepidation can cause one's pupils to become dilated. This can mean the opponent has nothing and just made a bluff, or that they have a great hand but don't know how to play it or how to conceal it. Recognizing tells is step one — determining what the tells mean is step two.
The mouth
The mouth can give off plenty of physical tells, too, even when it's not speaking. When someone is nervous or tense, their lips can be thin and pinched. If a player is more relaxed, in contrast, their lips are more full and rounded. Both can be an indicator of a player's hand strength or confidence.
The heart
You don't need to be a cardiologist to know when someone's heart is beating a bit faster or harder. If a player starts taking deep breaths, starts to sweat, or has a pulsing vein on their neck, forehead or temple, their heart is probably racing. The same can be true if their hands start trembling or voice begins quivering.
Take mental notes of your own behavior when a hand or situation makes your heart beat faster. That self-awareness can help you pick up on an opponent's behavior and give you a better idea of when they're bluffing, when they're strong and when they're holding a monster of a hand.
Poker hand strength: How to use tells in online poker
Online poker can make recognizing tells more difficult, but it's certainly not impossible. There are plenty of ways one can read an opponent, and for that matter plenty of ways one can use reverse tells to throw off an opponent and become harder to read.
Chat functions
Some players give away information by suddenly becoming talkative in the table chat. Be sure to make mental notes when this happens so you know how to perceive each player's future communication efforts during hands.
Checking after a long pause
If a player takes a long time to make a move, then simply checks, they're either holding a weak hand or trying to get you to think they're holding a weak hand (slow playing). Determine the meaning behind the long waits and you can take advantage of the player the next time they exhibit that behavior.
Betting or raising after a long pause
This generally means a player has a strong hand, either because they want you to think they are weak (slow play) or because they're literally contemplating how much to bet so they can draw callers. Few players — online or in real life — put in huge bets right after flopping a huge hand. They want you to stick around, so their ploy might be to feign weakness like a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Checking and then calling
A check-call can mean your opponent has a draw and needs one more card in order to have a strong hand. If the opponent then makes a bet the following round — and there's a flush or straight on the board — you might want to get away.
Betting or checking immediately
Most poker sites allow players to select "check" or "bet" before the action even gets to them. When a player selects one of those actions before their turn, it will immediately check or bet once it's their turn. That gives the opponents the distinct advantage of recognizing an insta-check (sign of weakness) or insta-bet (sign of strength).
Player timing out
If a player times out, their head might not be fully in the game. They may be distracted, growing tired of playing, or just not very good. As a result, these players often "time out" for inactivity. This can be a tell, and a positive sign that said player can be taken advantage of when you go heads-up against them.
Poker hand strength: Conclusion
Understanding tells and reading opponents can provide a poker player with a massive advantage on the real-life Hold'em table or on the computer. Just remember that the No. 1 way to learn about a player's style of play, strategy and tendencies is by examining how they play each hand.
The name of the game is trying to figure out your opponent and keep them from figuring you out — if you constantly take mental notes and practice looking for the right tells, you can become a psychological force in cash games and tournaments.