Poker hands and your Path to Victory
Learning the variety of poker hands available in any given game of poker is key to mastering the game itself. Indeed it’s the first step, for if you don’t know what the hands mean then you have no chance of succeeding against veteran players.
Here, then, is a listing of the various poker hands available, and how they rank against one another, running from least effective to most:
-
High card: The worst of the poker hands. This takes your highest card and ranks it against other players. This will almost always lose.
-
Pair: Two cards of the same value. Not that great when it comes to hands, but at least not the worst.
-
Two pairs: The same as the above hands, though in this case you have two pairs of different cards (say, two twos and two fours).
-
Three of a kind: Pretty simple poker combo: you have four of the same card value.
-
Straight: This is five cards that form a sequence by terms of their values. So having a two, three, four, five and six (of any suit) would earn you a straight. Bear in mind for this that ace is a high card, not a low, so you can’t get away with ace, two, three, four and five, just ten, jack, queen, king and ace.
-
Flush: Five cards of the same suit. It doesn’t matter which cards they are so long as their suit matches all the way around.
-
Full house: This combines the pair with the three of a kind. Three of one value card and two of another.
-
Four of a kind: Another of the hands that’s fairly easy to decipher: you need four cards with the same value.
-
Straight flush: Five cards in sequential order and all of the same suit. This is an extremely difficult hand to get; however there’s still one more difficult hand…
-
Royal flush: The best poker hand available. The ten, jack, queen, king and ace, all of one suit. This hand is pretty much an automatic win.
|
