Ever wondered how you too can be a font of all poker knowledge and math wizardry? All you need is a calculator with a ‘combinations’ button (designated ‘nCr’ or similar).

Now imagine that ‘nCr’ stands for ‘choose’ and that you’ll be putting in numbers either side and hitting the combinations button in the middle. So, to calculate the number of possible starting hands enter ’52 choose 2’, and voila! The answer is 1,326.

Want to know how many ways someone can be dealt Aces? There are four Aces in the deck, so enter ‘4 choose 2’, which is 6. And the chances of being dealt a pair of them? Well 1,326 divided by 6 is 220-to-1. Not very good unfortunately!

But They Were Suited!  —  Don’t get dazzled by two of a kind. The odds just aren’t that good!

Starting hand requirements are one of the cornerstones of successful poker and one of the traps beginners often fall into is playing hands like Q(h), 5(h) or J(s), 3(s) “just because they’re suited”. Well, put the mechanics of poker math into action and you’ll soon see why this is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

Forgetting for a second that you might win by pairing your hole cards (or lose a lot on your kicker), what are the chances of actually making the flush? Say you hold two hearts – the chances of actually flopping it is ’11 choose 3’ (you need three of the eleven hearts remaining in the deck) divided by ’50 choose 3’ (the total combinations possible from the cards you haven’t seen), which is 0.84%. Eek!

As you can see, those flushes on the flop come along less than one in 100 times, so what if you’re only looking for a flush draw on the flop?

Now you want two hearts and one card of another suit to turn up. The equation here is ’11 choose 2’ (two of the remaining hearts) multiplied by ’39 choose 1’ (any of the remaining cards that aren’t hearts) divided by 19,600, which is still only 10.94%.

Consider these numbers and you can see why playing hole cards simply because they’re suited is a very bad idea.

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