Does anyone know what the top ten starting hands are in razz poker? I just started playing the micro limits online, and I am trying to build my knowledge of the game. When I found out what top ten were in texas hold 'em it helped my playing get better, so if I'm going to start improving my razz game, I figure I should at least be aware of the top ten starting hands and thus the top ten money-making hands of the game.

The top 10 hands? Or the top 10 percent?

The top ten hands are, approximately in this order,
3 2 A
4 2 A
4 3 A
4 3 2
5 2 A
5 3 A
5 3 2
5 4 A
5 4 2
6 2 A

There really isn't much difference between any of them, though. Razz hands actually run pretty close in value, and the *real* value of a hand is VERY dependent on the dead cards. The worst 3-card-8, for example, 876, is not really that much of a dog (on 3rd) to the very best razz hand and can be a favorite with favorable exposed cards.

I know a lot of people try to approach razz this way when they start, but I don't think there's a lot of use in thinking of razz hands this way.

just to add 1 thing to what Rusty said - in Razz you need a 5-card hand to win at showdown, so no matter what 3-card hand you start with, you need to catch 2 cards and improve to win at showdown, which is unlike HE, for example, in which AA, KK, etc. can and will win at showdown without improvement. In a game like Razz, hand values begin to diverge later in the hand than 3rd street (ex., 4th-5th street). This makes play on these streets very imprortant.

That being said, in general, 3-card bicycles, 3-card 6s, 3-card 7s will be your big money winning hands.

3 wheel cards are the best. The difference in strength gets greater as you go higher up: that is there is a lot more difference between 2 cards to a 8 and 2 cards to an 9 than between 2 cards to a 5 and 2 cards to a 6. Also, the difference between A28 an 678 is much greater than the difference between A23 and 345.

As a rule of thumb 3 cards to a 7 is almost always playable. 3 cards to an 8 is usually playable. Anything else is only playable to limp behind, steal or maybe against a suspected steal.

How live your cards are is really important. You also want your upcard to be low and be duplicated in other players upcards. That way, your weaknesses aren't visible.

I would basically abandon the notion that the first three cards have any sort of absolute ranking. Just forget about it, because thinking that way will get you started completely on the wrong foot in this game.

If you have the lowest door card and your hole cards are lower yet, then you have the "best" starting hand, but if other door cards are duplicated and none of yours cards are, then your hand loses some equity, especially if your opponents have smoother hole cards than you.

If the cards under your highest card are out on Third, then your draw is compromised, regardless of what you are drawing to, and in bad matchups between dead and live hands, some normally-playable hands become ridiculous equity dogs against hands they would normally be favorites over.

You need to be acutely aware of what type hands your opponents play, because this will allow you to evaluate the relative strength of your starter and resultant draw. This is so much more important than just picking starting hands by rank that I think you should just ignore that step.

For example, A23 unduplicated as a starter is even money against 865 if there are two Eights and a Six out, but you will hear even experienced players suggest that you should always play the A23 and never play the 865.

Exacto, see if this is useful.

Nicely done. I wonder if we can make an argument for 32A, 42A, 52A, 62A - something that weights for the smoothest hand? You're right about it all, though, it hardly matters as it's mostly relative.

These are all so close that you could probably swap any 2 adjacent ones without noticing - but - these are actual results from "simulation". That is, I gave hero the indicated hand and the field random hands and dealt out the cards a few million times. It doesn't really matter how many opponents there are, unlike some games, the rankings stay about the same.

It's not just razz that it's hard to make hand ranking charts for, btw, it's all stud games, because the exposed cards make things tough. But razz adds to that problem, the fact that there just is not as wide of a range on preflop. Although there are pre-flop hand pairings that have HUGE favorites (A23 vs KQJ or example) in practice they don't happen, wheras in holdem they do (KK vs QQ) because in razz one of the hands is so obviously terrible that no one but a total maniac would play it.

Exactly. I think the other part of that is, in Razz, you are only doing one thing. Whereas in HE, the KK/QQ could end up making trips or a straight, a flush or a FH. So there are all these extra elements in play.

A very good point, but your thinking needs a slight adjustment. When looking at the A23 in your example, we can see the dead cards but we can't see whether we're up against an opponent with exactly 865. We have to evaluate our hand vs. their likely range. So the question really should be something like "how will my hand play vs. an opponent with (8-8-4) on this board?" In that case, A23 still has a little more equity than 865. Also, there is more to poker than just showdown equity, so unless you're getting it all in on 3rd you have to consider what kind of value you can get from your hand as well (in the form of implied odds).

Goof point also. In general, though, having a live higher hand against a dead low hand is probably an advantage if they are equal odds on 3rd street. The live high hand is easier to get away from and its strength is harder to read.

Additionally, besides the ease-of-fold playing advantage, there is an inherent implied odds advantage to a weak-looking hand, in that you will get more suspicious calls at showdown and players will draw poorly against you because your starting hand "obviously" wasn't very "good."

Extracting value from a board of A32 is more difficult than from a board of 856, assuming equivalent equity positions.

[edit]: So yeah, basically what you just said... I'll get my coat.

a very important point. Taken into context, razz is the one stud game where
raising and 3-betting [or calling 2 and 3 bets] on 3rd tends to be spewish
if u do it a lot.

Well... If raising or three-betting knocks-out a hand that is about even money with yours (and a lot of hands will be), then you accumulate abandoned equity share against the remaining field, and that's an excellent thing to do.

What you're not doing as often as other games is raising and three-betting on Third purely for value. You should still be making functional raises.