Hand (poker)
A
hand in
poker can mean any of the following:
# A unit of play consisting of a deal, one or more rounds of betting, and possibly a showdown.# A set of five cards with a certain value. For example, the hand is a "flush", a hand that is valuable because each card is of the same
suit.# A player's set of non-communal cards.
The second and third definitions are often used interchangeably. For example, in
Texas hold 'em, a player holding , with a board of , might say, "my hand is ace-king". However, his best 5-card hand (the portion of the hand which determines value) is the kings-over-aces full house.
The following general rules apply to evaluating poker hands, whatever set of hand values are used.
* Individual cards are ranked A (high), K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 (low).:Individual card ranks are often used to evaluate hands that contain no pairs or other special combinations, or to rank the
kickers of otherwise equal hands. The Ace is ranked low in ace-to-five and ace-to-six lowball games.
* Suits have no value.:The suits of the cards are mainly used in determining whether a hand fits a certain category (specifically the
Flush and
Straight flush hands). In most variants, if two players have hands that are identical except for suit, then they are tied and split the pot. Sometimes a ranking called
high card by suit is used for randomly selecting a player to deal.
* A hand always consists of five cards.:In games where more than five cards are available to each player, hands are ranked by choosing some five-card subset according to the rules of the game, and comparing that five-card hand against the five-card hands of the other players. Whatever cards remain after choosing the five to be played are of no consequence in determining the winner. (For example, when comparing identical full houses, there are no "kickers".)
* Hands are ranked first by category, then by individual card ranks.:That is, even the minimum qualifying hand in a certain category defeats all hands in all lower categories. The smallest
Two pair hand, for example, defeats all hands with just
One pair or
No pair. Only between two hands in the same category are card ranks used to break ties. The highest single card in each flush or straight is used to break ties (the Ace-through-five straight is the lowest straight, the Ace being a low card in this context). Within two
Two pair hands, the higher pairs are first compared. If they tie, then the secondary pairs are compared, and then finally the
kicker.
*For ease of explanation, hands are shown here neatly arranged, but a poker hand has the same value no matter what order the cards are received in.
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The highest possible hand in Poker (without Jokers) is a Royal Flush (shown here) |
The standard
ranking of poker hands is:
*
Five of a kind: Five cards of the same rank (in games with
wild cards)
Example: Joker
*
Royal flush: Five cards of the highest possible sequence and of the same suit.
Example: *
Straight flush: Five cards in sequence and of the same suit.
Example: *
Four of a kind: A hand with four cards of the same rank.
Example: *
Full house: A hand with three cards of one rank and two of another.
Example: *
Flush: Five cards of the same suit.
Example: *
Straight: Five cards in sequence.
Example: *
Three of a kind: Three cards of the same rank.
Example: *
Two pair: Two cards of one rank, two of another.
Example: *
One pair: Two cards of the same rank.
Example: *
High card: Also known as a "no pair" hand. The following example is considered "Ace high."
Example: The hands are ranked in this order because of their relative probabilities, with rarer hands ranking above more common hands. See also
Poker probability. All 5-card poker hands can be collapsed down to 7,462 distinct
equivalence classes. For example, there are 24 different ways to create an aces over kings full house hand, but since they all hold the same poker ranking value, they can be collapsed into the same equivalence class. In this way, all 2,598,960 unique five card poker hands can be shrunk down to just 7,462 distinct classes of hands.
Some games called
lowball or
low poker are played where players strive not for the highest ranking of the above combinations but for the lowest ranking hand. There are three methods of ranking low hands, called
Ace-to-five low,
Deuce-to-seven low, and
Ace-to-six low. The
ace-to-five method is most common. A sub-variant within this category is
high-low poker, in which the highest and lowest hands split the pot (with the highest hand taking any odd chips if the pot does not divide equally). Sometimes straights and/or flushes count in determining which hand is highest but not in determining which hand is lowest (being reckoned as a no-pair hand in the latter instance), so that a player with such a holding can win both ways and thus take the entire pot.
Certain variants use hands of only three cards, either high or low. Three-card low hands can be ranked by any of the three methods above, although with three cards they become
ace-to-three (rather than ace-to-five),
deuce-to-five, and
ace-to-four. The ace-to-three method is the most common, just as the ace-to-five method is most common method for five cards. Three-card high hands are ranked in one of two ways: either with or without straights and flushes. Without them (which is the most common, and used such games as
Chinese poker), the hands are simply
no pair,
one pair, and
three of a kind. If you add straights and flushes, the order of hands should be changed to reflect the correct probabilities:
no pair,
one pair,
flush,
straight,
three of a kind,
straight flush. This order is used, for example, in
Mambo stud.
Some poker games are played with a deck that has been
stripped of certain cards, usually low-ranking ones. For example, the
Australian game of
Manila uses a 32-card deck in which all cards below the rank of 7 are removed, and
Mexican stud removes the 8s, 9s, and 10s. In both of these games, a flush ranks above a full house, because having fewer cards of each suit available makes flushes rarer.
Some games add one or more
non-standard poker hands,
bugs,
wild cards, or have other exceptions to the standard rules above. For example, in the game of
Pai gow poker as played in Nevada, a
wheel (5-4-3-2-A) ranks above a king-high straight, but below an ace-high straight.
*
List of slang names for poker hands*
Poker probability*
Non-standard poker hand*
The 7,462 Equivalence classes
