Poker Hand Rankings
Poker is an easy game to play, but a difficult one to master. Perhaps the most important thing any player can learn before they sit down at a Bitcoin poker site is the game’s hand ranking system, as these will play a massive role in the decisions that are made. Luckily, there aren’t actually too many hand rankings to learn, so it shouldn’t take too long to commit them to memory – although it might be an idea to have this list handy when you play for the first few times.
So, here are the hand rankings when playing poker, in descending order of importance, along with a short description of each of them…
- Royal Flush. The best possible hand. It is achieved by getting 10-J-Q-K-A in a hand, all of the same suit. If you have this hand, you can’t be beaten.
- Straight Flush. This is like a royal flush, but can be made with any five running cards of the same suit.
- Four of a Kind. This is pretty self-explanatory, as it involves getting four cards all of the same value in a hand.
- Full House. This is when you have three of a kind in your hand, along with another pair of the same card, e.g. 5-5-5-7-7.
- Flush. A flush happens when you manage to get all five cards in your hand to be the same suit, regardless of the card values.
- Straight. This is a run of any five consecutive cards – it doesn’t matter what suit they happen to be.
- Three of a Kind. A pretty easy one to explain, as three of a kind simply means that you have three of the same value card in your hand.
- Two Pair. When you get two different pairs of cards in your hand – be careful, as this hand can sometimes seem stronger than it actually is.
- Pair. When you have two identical value cards in a hand. This is not a particularly strong hand, so think carefully before calling/raising.
- High Card. The lowest possible hand you can have, as you have none of the hands listed above. In poker, Ace is the highest card, while 2 is the lowest.
Once you’ve committed these to memory, you’ll have taken the first step on the road to becoming a competent poker player. There’s still much more to learn though, so why not look through some of our other Bitcoin poker guides?
