Youre sitting at a big cash poker game, waiting anxiously as your cards are dealt. The dealer sends them over, first one, then the next. You slowly turn the corners of each card, hoping, praying to see what? What exactly are the best hands in poker?

The short answer is: aces and lots of em. In all forms of poker, the ace is king (well, OK, the King is king, but the Ace is even better). Its the highest card and in low games (where the worst hand wins) the lowest. But a lot depends on what type of poker game youre playing and there are hands without Aces that are still pretty good. Lets take a look at the various games and see what the boss hands are and which hands you can still feel pretty good about.

In Hold`em, the best starting hand is pocket aces, no question about it. Two aces in your hand and you should be ready to move in all your chips if the opportunity presents itself. The problem with AA, as Hold`em players quickly learn, is that it is a hand with which you will win a small pot or lose a big one. What this means is that AA is a hand which is unlikely to improve after the flop and if it does, it will be so obvious that you wont get any action from the other players. For example if the flop comes A 8 3, as soon as you bet, the other players will likely fold, as since you have two of the aces and one is on the board, its unlikely that any of the other players is sitting with the last one and a kicker (the card thats not an ace) big enough to pay you off meaningfully). On the other hand, if the flop comes J T 6, its going to be hard for you not to pay off a player who has flopped jacks and tens, or who has KQ and makes a straight when an ace comes on the turn. For this reason people like to bet big pre-flop with aces, but to bet too big and only win the blinds can be considered a waste of a very powerful hand. One way to play them is to limp (just call the blinds) and hope somebody raises so that you can then go over the top (re-raise) of them.

In Seven Card Stud, the best starting hand, as you might guess, is rolled up aces. That is, two aces in your two hole cards and one face up. You might think that this is a much better relative starting hand then pocket aces in Hold`em because if two aces are good, three aces are better! Youd be right, but its a lot more than that. For one thing, rolled up aces becomes a well hidden top full house in a hurry. Youve got four more cards coming and if any of them pair up, youve got an almost unbeatable hand. For another, with an ace showing, youd be likely to bet no matter what your hole cards were, so a bet does not necessarily indicate the strength of your hand. Unless that last ace comes, the other cards you get wont give away your monster either. Finally, since there are no community cards and youll get to see a lot of up cards around the table, it will be much easier for you to gauge the strength of your aces relative to the other hands, something its not nearly as easy to do in Hold`em.

Omaha is four-card Hold`em. If two aces is great in Hold`em and three aces is better in Seven Card Stud, then surely all four aces in Omaha is the greatest hand imaginable right? Wrong! In fact, if you get dealt all four aces in Omaha, your best play would be to throw your hand away! Heres why: In Omaha you are permitted to use exactly two of the cards in your hand with three on the board. No more, no less. Therefore even if you have four aces in your hand, all you really have is a pair of aces and since the other two are in your hand, they arent showing up on the board, so you cant really improve your hand. The best hand you can be dealt in Omaha is Ace King double suited, for example, the ace and King of Hearts with the ace and King of Spades. This gives you the best opportunity to make the nut (best) straight, flush, or full house. A hand like T J Q K (also called a wraparound or wrap) is great for its straight possibilities, especially if its double suited, but even though it can make big hands, they will rarely be the nut hands and Omaha is a game where the best possible hand often wins. In another variation of Omaha, Omaha Hi Low, where the best hand and the worst hand split the pot, the best hand is A2 double suited. This gives you the best opportunity to scoop, make the best possible low hand and high hand and get the whole pot.

Since you cant get all aces all the time, what other hands should you be looking for? In Hold`em any big pair is pretty good as well as any two cards in the ten-through-ace zone, the closer to AA or AK the better. Suited connectors, hands like the eight and nine of hearts, that have both straight and flush possibilities, also have a lot of potential, especially in No Limit games. In Seven Card stud, any rolled up trips (three of the same rank on your first three cards) is fantastic. A big pair is pretty good too, especially if both parts of the pair are concealed as your hole cards. Three of the same suit or three to a straight are also potentially strong holdings; you must look at the other up cards that are out to determine how strong. In Omaha and Omaha hi low, the most important thing is to have good combinations of hands. For example A A 6 9 of all different suits is really not that great, but Ah Ks Qh Qs, which yields four strong hands (QQ, AK, AQ suited and KQ suited) is quite strong.

Now that you know what the best hands are, be patient, theyll come to you eventually and when they do, youll be sitting pretty.