CHANGING HAND RANKS
First let’s look at why it’s a mistake to even attempt to list hands in rank order.
A complete poker hand requires five cards. In Holdem you must make a decision whether to play after seeing only two cards.
This is not enough to get a definition of what your five-card hand will be or to be able to provide any firm rules about how good a starting hand it is.
Some hands are better than others and we can formulate some general guidelines, but we can’t formulate a universal ranking.
In other popular forms of poker, you don’t have to commit to a bet until you have more cards: three cards in Seven-Stud, four cards in Ohmaha, and in Holdem you cannot determine a fixed ranking of the initial two-card hand.
You simply don’t know which is best.
Any ranking you might attempt will be intransitive.
Transitive is a mathematical concept that says that if A bets B and B beast C then A will beat C. This is a property of numbers, for example.
It’s a property we are all familiar with, even if we aren’t familiar with the term transitive.
Intransitive means that the things we are dealing with don’t have that transitive property.
Not every group of entities can be treated as if they are numbers.
Two-card Holdem hands are an example.
For instance, in a two-player showdown (where both players will stay to end ), most of the time
A 
K 
beats J 7
J T beats 2 
2
2 2 beats A K
So, which is the best hand? It’s game to be the one that wins the most money, and that depends on the game conditions-the nature, caliber, and habits of your opponents.
Two-card Holdem hands just don’t have stable ranks. You cannot just list all the hands, draw a line, and say play all the hands above this line. It just doesn’t work.
I’m saying this more than once, because it’s important. Many players seem to be looking for some magic formula to make then a winning player. There is no Holy Grail.
Different writers have tried to categorize hands.
They come up with slightly different rankings because the different writers are considering games with either different betting structures or different playing conditions.
The various hand rankings you’ll find in poker books are all correct-and they are all incorrect.
Hand rankings don’t really exist except within very specifically defined situations.
The value of a hand is determined by the playing characteristics of the game you’re in and the betting structure.
The differences you might find between different books are just a reflection of the differences in the particular situation for which they are trying to value the hands.
There is no right or wrong except in the idea of what composes a typical game or typical opponent.
Pick the Right Table / Picking a Seat / Theories of Poker / Betting Theory: The Odds
A Theory of Starting Hand Value
A Theory of Flop Play: Counting Outs and Evaluating Draws
The Dynamics of Game Conditions / Table Image / Player Stereotypes
Women and Poker / Spread-Limit Games / Double Bet on the End Games / Kill Games
Short-handed Games / Tournaments / No-limit and Pot-Limit Poker
