Hole cards
also called pocket cards
Your hole cards are the two cards dealt face down to you alone, which only you may use and which stay hidden until a showdown.
In Texas Hold'em there are 1,326 different pairs of hole cards, and every hand of poker starts with one of them. Of those, 78 are pocket pairs and 312 are suited, which is 5.9% and 23.5% of all deals.
They are only half of a hand. Five shared cards follow, and the best five card combination from all seven is what counts, so a strong pair of hole cards is a head start rather than a result.
an example
your cards
board
Your two hole cards never paired with anything on the board. Your best five cards are the ace, the king, the queen, the seven and the five, and that is the hand you show.
This example is made up. The real one is in your own hand history: find hole cards in your own hands and see how often it came up and what it cost you.
related terms
Board
The board is the set of shared cards in the middle of the table, up to five of them, which every player may combine with ...
Pocket pair
A pocket pair is two hole cards of the same rank, which means you already hold a pair before any community card is dealt ...
Suited
Two hole cards are suited when they share a suit, which lets them make a flush together and raises the value of almost e ...
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Knowing the word is not the same as seeing it.
The full order of play, from the blinds to the showdown.