Poker Hand Rankings

In all poker games, the object is to form the best hand featuring five cards. Many games will give you more cards to choose from, or shared cards to use formulating your hand, but the end result always consists of five cards.

From lowest to highest, here is the order of hands.

High card: the cards have no relationship, and the highest card in the hand denotes whre the hand places, from ace down to two.

One pair: a hand in which two cards are matched, such as two jacks,.

Two pair: a hand with two different pairs, such as two nines and two fours.

Three of a kind: a hand matching three cards of the same rank, such as three kings.

Straight: a hand with all five cards in rank order, without skipping a rank, such as queen-jack-ten-nine-eight.

Flush: a hand with all five cards the same suit, such as all five hearts.

Full House: a hand having three of a kind, with the other two cards paired. An example would be three kings with a pair of sevens.

Four of a kind: a hand containing all four cards of a certain rank, for instance four jacks.

Straight flush: any hand meeting the requirements to be both a flush and a straight. This means all five cards must be in rank order, and of the same suit. A royal flush is the highest possible straight flush, the best hand in poker without wild card play. An example of a royal flush would be ace-king-queen-jack-ten, all of spades.