So many players who are new to the game of Texas Hold’em Poker get very excited when they look down at their hole cards and find two aces, known as “Pocket Rockets”. While having two aces is exciting, it also has to be tempered. And as always, we are going to let the percentages tell us why this is.

First of all, starting any hand pre-flop with pocket aces is a good thing. It is the best starting hand. But the question is, how good is it? Let’s look at the stats of how often pocket rockets win:

Winning 85% of the time when it is heads up is a pretty good percentage. But if you notice, the percentage drops all the way to 31% in a nine-handed game. In order to put this in perspective, let’s look at this analogy: Give me a dollar and ask me to make change for you. Instead of a dollar, I give you $0.31. That doesn’t feel nearly as exciting!

Let’s look at another pocket pair as a comparison to see what that percentage looks like. Pocket deuces are never very exciting for a new player.

While these percentages are much lower, a pair of deuces wins about half the time in heads up. Yet no one gets excited when they look at the hole cards and find two twos.

The take away story here is that pocket aces are exciting, and they are the best starting hand in Texas Hold’em. But be careful about getting too excited and over-betting or being overly confident.