The range and the cards you can see
Combos
| Hand | All combos | Left | Blocked |
|---|
A pair has 6 combos (4 × 3 ÷ 2), a suited hand 4 and an offsuit hand 12. Each card of a rank on the board or in your hand removes the combos that would need it: one ace showing leaves 3 combos of AA and 12 of AK.
- Maths reviewed by Josh Miller
- Tested by Diana Westfield
Combo counting is how good players narrow a range, and a poker combinations calculator does it without the mental juggling. AK has 16 combinations from a full deck. Put an ace on the flop and only 12 are left. Pocket aces drop from 6 to 3. Type any hands or range into the free CasinoCalcs calculator above, add the board and your own cards, and it counts what’s still possible.
Poker combinations for each type of hand
| Hand type | Combos | One card of a rank seen | Two seen |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pocket pair (QQ) | 6 | 3 | 1 |
| Suited (AKs) | 4 | 3 | 2 or 3 |
| Offsuit (AKo) | 12 | 9 | 6 to 7 |
| Both (AK) | 16 | 12 | 8 or 9 |
The counts come straight from the cards. A pair is 2 of the 4 cards of one rank: 4 × 3 ÷ 2 = 6. An unpaired hand is 4 × 4 = 16, four of them suited. Every card of that rank you can see takes a whole column of combos out.
Why blockers change decisions
Say the board is A♠ 7♦ 2♣ and villain raises. If you think they only raise sets and AK, count it: three sets (77, 22 and AA) with 3 combos each and AK with 12. That’s 9 combos of sets against 12 of AK, so more than half the time they hold the hand you can beat with a strong ace. Hold an ace yourself and AK drops to 8 and AA to 1, and now sets make up more of their range than AK does. Same raise, very different spot.
Blockers work for bluffs too. Holding the ace of the flush suit means your opponent can’t have the nut flush, which makes a big river bet more believable from you and less likely to run into the top of their range. The calculator shows this in the “Blocked” column, hand by hand.
Ranges and shorthand
Use AK for both suited and offsuit, AKs or AKo for one or the other, and a plus to extend: QQ+ means QQ, KK and AA, ATs+ means ATs up to AKs. The share line tells you what fraction of all possible two-card hands the range covers after the cards you can see, which is the starting point for any range-based maths. For equity against a range, use the poker odds calculator; to decide how often to call, the MDF calculator, and for the hands worth playing at all, the poker starting hands chart.
Counting combos is a skill. It doesn’t remove the swings. BeGambleAware.org has free support.