Examples of poker hand categories in descending order
The following rules apply to the ranking of all poker hands. Under typical rules there are 10 distinct rankings.
A hand always consists of five cards. In games where more than
five cards are available to each player, the best five-card combination
of those cards must be played. Any cards not included in the hand do
not affect its ranking. For example, if player A holds and player B holds , and five cards are available to both players, the players hold equally ranking 3-4-5-6-7 straights despite the fact that the player B's ace ranks higher than the player A's queen.
Individual cards are ranked A (highest), K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 (lowest). Aces can appear low (as if having a value of "1") when part of an A-2-3-4-5 straight or straight flush.
In the poker variants ace-to-five and ace-to-six lowball, the ace only
plays low, and only plays high in deuce-to-seven lowball. Individual
card ranks are used to rank hands that are in the same rank category.
The suits of the cards are used to determine whether a hand forms a flush or straight flush.
In most variants, suits do not have an associated value, and play no
part in determining the ranking of a hand. Sometimes a ranking called high card by suit is used for randomly selecting a player to deal. Low card by suit usually determines the bring-in bettor in stud games.
Hands are ranked first by category, then by individual card ranks;
even the lowest hand that qualifies in a certain category defeats all
hands in all lower categories. For example, , the lowest-valued two pair hand, defeats all hands with just one pair or high card (such as ). Only between two hands in the same category are card ranks used to break ties.
A poker hand has the same hand ranking regardless of the order in
which it is arranged by the deal, by a description, or by a picture. So a
hand arranged as is ranked the same as even though in the first hand the three of a kind is not immediately obvious.
If there are multiple hands of the same rank at the showdown
(therefore no kicker(s), or kickers have equal ranks), the pot is
divided equally between the winning players. If the divided number
creates fractions (odd chip), the first hand clockwise from the
button/dealer gets the chip.
There are 311,875,200 ways (5-permutations) of being dealt five cards from a 52-card deck, but since the order of
cards does not matter, there are 5! = 120 5-permutations given in any
one hand, so there are only 2,598,960 possible combinations in five-card poker. Similarly, in seven-card poker there are 133,784,560 combinations.
If the game is played without the high card by suit rule, hands that
have equivalent values are considered to be the same hand, there will be
7,462 distinct hands in five-card poker, and 4,824 distinct hands when
choosing the best five in seven-card poker, like Texas hold 'em;
the number of seven-card poker is fewer than of five-card poker because
some hands are impossible with seven cards (e.g. 7-high).
