Hold Em Poker Hands
Poker Hand Rankings & The Best Texas Hold’em Poker Hands. Poker Hand Rankings. The best hand possible, a royal flush consists of A, K, Q, J and 10, all of the. Poker Hand Rankings Quiz. Tie-breakers and Kickers. Ranking The Top 20 No Limit Texas. The Big Slick this refers to the Ace-King combination in Texas Hold’em. This is the best non-paired poker hand you can form. Cowboys are known as a pair of Kings. Open Ended is poker lingo for a Straight draw that’s open on both ends. If you’re holding 9-8 pocket cards and the board reads 7-6-2, you can form a Straight with 10 or 5 on the Turn and River.
If you’re learning to play poker, you’ll need to understand poker hand rankings before you can do anything else.
The hand order is the same in all forms of poker. It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing Texas Hold’em poker, Omaha, Stud or any other form of the game, all poker hands use five cards. But which are the best poker hands and which are the worst? Keep reading for our handy guide to get you ready to join the Poker Club community!
Best Hands In Poker Texas Holdem
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Poker Hand Rankings
In Texas Hold’em, you’ll receive two hole cards, which are the hidden cards only used by you. Throughout the course of the game, five more cards will be dealt into the middle of the table, and they’re called community cards. These community cards can be used by everyone at the table.Once all cards have been dealt, you’ll need to make the best five-card poker hand from the seven available cards. You can use any combination from your hand and the board. Here are the complete poker hand rankings, starting with the best hands first, down to the weakest hands in order.
NB: In the following poker hand hierarchy examples, the first character represents the rank of the card, while the second represents the suit. For example, Ks means “King of Spades”.
Royal flush
The “Royal Flush” is famously the best possible hand in poker, so-called because it contains all of the “royal” cards, i.e. the five best cards, in the same suit. It is really just an Ace high straight flush, thus it sits at the top of the poker hand rankings.
The probability of making a Royal Flush in Texas Hold’em Poker is tiny, just 1 in 649,739, so don’t expect to see them very often!
Example hand:
Ah Kh Qh Jh 10h
Straight flush
Next up, there’s the straight flush, which is simply a less regal version of the royal flush. You’ll have a straight flush if you have five consecutive cards, all of the same suit. So, for example, 5-6-7-8-9, all of clubs, would be a straight flush. In Texas Hold’em poker, with average luck, you will complete a straight flush once every 3,590 hands. If two or more players have a straight flush, the player with the highest card in their hand will be declared the winner.
Example hand:
Texas Holdem Hands In Order
7d 6d 5d 4d 3d
Four of a kind
Just as the name suggests, this poker hand contains 4 cards of the exact same rank, with any other random fifth card completing the hand. A relatively strong hand among the poker rankings, the chances of making four of a kind in Texas Hold’em are just 1 in 595. This is an exceptionally strong hand but if two players have four of a kind, the four of a kind made up of the highest cards will win. If this still doesn’t lead to a winner, the kicker is used. Kickers are discussed further down this page.
Example hand:
Js Jd Jc Jh 3s
Full house
The next hand is the first of the more commonly seen hands. A full house is a hand containing three cards of the same value, and two other identical cards of a different value. For example, A-A-A-K-K would be a full house. The three of a kind part plays first, so “aces full” would beat “kings full”, for example. The below example is referred to as “Aces full of fours”, since it’s three of a kind Aces, with a pair of fours.The odds against completing a full house in Texas Hold’em poker are around 37.5 to 1. If two or more players have a full house, the player with the highest three of a kind will win. If this doesn’t lead to a winner, the player with the highest pair wins.
Example hand:
Ah Ac Ad 4s 4h
Flush
A flush is a hand featuring five cards all of the same suit. These five cards won’t be consecutive ones – if they were, you’d have a royal flush or straight flush instead. It’s a reasonably strong hand, but be careful before shoving all your money into the middle of the table, as it can often be beaten.If more than one player has a flush, the winner will be the player with the highest card in their flush. The second highest, then third highest, and so on are then used to separate hands.
Example hand:
Ks 9s 7s 6s 2s
Straight
Sitting right in the middle of the poker hand hierarchy, a straight is a hand with any five cards in running order, but not of the same suit.
The chances of making a straight are a little under 21 to 1 against in a game like Texas Hold’em. The player with the highest card in their hand will be declared the winner if multiple players have straights.
Example hand:
Qs Jd 10c 9h 8d
Three of a kind
No prizes for guessing that this is a hand that contains three cards all of the same suit. The other two cards will be different from one another – if they aren’t, you’ve got a full house, which is a much better hand. In Texas Hold’em poker, you’ll make three of a kind roughly once every 20 hands. The player with the highest cards in their three is the winner if more than one player has this hand. In the event of two or more players having the same three of a kind, then kickers are used.
Example hand:
9c 9h 9s 7h 5d
Two pair
If you are holding two different pairs with a random, unmatched card in your hand, then you have “two pair”. The bigger of the two pairs plays first, with the lesser pair only acting to break a tie. So Kings and threes would beat Queens and tens, for example, while Jacks and nines would beat Jacks and sevens.
Example hand:
Qs Qc 3h 3c 8d
Pair
One of the more common poker hands, and towards the bottom of the hand rankings. A pair is simply two cards of the same rank, with no other matching cards. In Texas Hold’em poker, you will find a pair in your two starting hole cards once every 17 hands on average.
Example hand:
10s 10d 6s 5h 2c
High Card
If your final five card hand doesn’t fit into any category in the above poker hand rankings, then you have the worst possible type of hand – high card. The best card in your hand plays, so the below example is “Ace high”. Ace high beats King high, and so on.
Example hand:
As Jh 9s 5d 4c
Understanding Kickers
To really bring your A-game, it helps to have a grasp on kickers too. Kickers are essentially spare cards in your hand. For example, if you had A-A-K-K-10, you’d have two pair and your kicker would be the 10.You might not think that your kicker is important, but it can be the difference between winning or losing a pot. This is because the kicker will be used to determine the winner when two players have the same hand. For example, if both players have A-A-K-K in their hand, however, one has a 10 kicker and the other has an 8, the player with the 10 wins, as they have the higher kicker.If both kickers are also the same and the hand allows, the second kicker will then be used, then the third. If two players have exactly the same hands though, the pot will be split.
Now you’re ready to raise your game in Poker Club, available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X S.
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6+ Hold’em is a popular ‘short deck’ poker format that plays much like Texas Hold’em, but with a few exciting differences:
- All cards lower than a six are removed from the deck
- Everyone posts an ante and only the button posts a blind – known as the ‘button blind’
- A flush beats a full-house
Available in cash games, exclusively at PokerStars, 6+ Hold’em is your chance to play an action-packed variant loved by high-stakes players around the world.
Let’s face it – fives, fours, threes, and twos got in the way a little bit in regular Holdem. They were consistent contributors to dry boring flops, blank turns, and no one ever making a hand. 6+ Hold’em (known conventionally as ‘Short Deck’) has been taking the poker world by storm and giving jaded long-term players a fresh breath of life as they gamble it up in this wild format of the game played with a 36-card deck. Six Plus is exactly as it sounds. There is no card in the deck below a six. As you can imagine, this leads to a lot less discoordination and makes it far easier to make a strong hand. When I first saw this game, I recall my first thought being:
Poker Hands Order Chart
‘Wait a second…it’s almost impossible not to make a straight!’
While this is a huge exaggeration. I think it captures the instinctive reaction of most players. Regular Holdem players must adapt quickly in 6+ Hold’em, migrating from a world where good hands are relatively rare, to one where they come along much more frequently. We shall get into the strategic effects of this shift in a future article. Today’s job is to get our heads around what hand rankings and rules have changed and why these changes were necessary to make 6+ Hold’em the harmoniously enjoyable game that it has become.
Blind & Antes
6+ Hold’em uses a ‘button blind’ structure: every player posts an ante, and the player seated at the button position is the only one who posts a blind – meaning there is only one blind per hand, rather than traditional small/big blind format.
The action starts with the player seated to the left of the button. Each hand then plays out according to Texas Hold’em rules, with pre-flop, flop, turn and river betting rounds.
If you’ve played Texas Hold’em games before, the rules of 6+ Hold’em are easy to follow.
Hand Rankings
The table below illustrates how the hand rankings have changed in 6+ Hold’em to accommodate the shorter deck:
The Top Hands
There is no change at the very top of the hand ranking chart. While you will make a straight flush and a royal flush more often in 6+ Hold’em than in Holdem, it is still very hard to make these hands relative to the other hands. Four of a Kind is a hand you will see much more often than in Holdem since there are now 9 ranks of card instead of thirteen but is still rare compared with other 6+ Hold’em holdings.
Flushes vs. Boats
The main change to the hierarchy is that Flushes now beat Full Houses (boats). This makes sense and to see why think of it this way.
In regular Holdem, there are four 9s in the deck, but there are also four of twelve other ranks of card. One in thirteen cards is a nine in regular Holdem. In 6+ Hold’em, there are only nine ranks of card and so one in nine cards is a 9. If you are dealt 99, any card in the deck goes from having a 2/50 = 4% chance of being a 9 to having a 2/34 = 6% chance. In 6+ Hold’em, it is 50% easier to find those set making cards. In fact, in 6+ Hold’em you will fail to flop a set (32/34 x 31/33 x 30/32) = 83% of the time. This means that we flop a set 17% of the time! After we have done the hard part, and hit one of our two cards to make a set, it is much easier for the board to then pair since sixteen of the cards that would prevent it from pairing in regular holdem (the deuces through fives) do not exist. Those cards really did spoil all the fun.
As for flushes, they are sadly no easier to make and come along less often than a full house does. While there are less ranks of cards in the 6+ Hold’em deck, there are still the same number of suits. Had we also removed all of the diamonds from the deck, we would have made flushes more likely. As it is, every card still has a one in four chance of being a spade (13/52 = 9/36).
One thing that has changed about flushes in short deck is that when a you hold a card that blocks an opponent from making a flush, you will block a greater portion of his possible flush cards. The board is J♣8♣6♣10♠Q♥ and we hold A♥K♣. In regular Holdem, we would remove one of ten remaining clubs, leaving Villain with nine clubs to instead of ten to form a flush. In other words, there are 10% less clubs in the deck for him to make a flush with when we hold this blocker. In 6+ Hold’em, there were only six possible clubs and we reduce this number to five due to our K♣ blocker. We have now made it 17% harder for Villain to hold a flush by removing a sixth of the clubs in the deck. Blockers matter more in 6+ Hold’em in just about every way due to the smaller deck, not just when it comes to blocking flushes.
Straights vs. Trips
While it is easier to flop three of a kind in 6+ Hold’em than it is to flop a straight, it is easier to make a straight by the river. There are only 9 ranks of cards remaining in the deck so if the board doesn’t double-pair, there will be straights everywhere. A board like K♠J♠10♣8♥6♥ is scary at the best of times in regular Holdem. In 6+ Hold’em, there are no deuces through fives to dilute the number of straights in each player’s range. The result is that it is incredibly easy to hold a straight in 6+ Hold’em. Pre-flop you will be dealt [97, Q9, AQ] 48/630 times. In Regular Holdem you will be dealt these hands 48/1326 times. While there are some versions of short deck Holdem where three of a kind beats a straight, this is not the case in 6+ Hold’em and so connected cards are very powerful. This format of the game encourages action by providing an incentive to play connected cards, which come along very frequently.
We should also note that there is a rather unconventional looking straight available in 6+ Hold’em. A6789 is a low straight in 6+ Hold’em just as A2345 is a low straight in regular Holdem. Look out for this one, it can really tak you by surprise if you are not careful.
Conclusion
6+ Hold’em is a different game. Some of the rules are very different, but as we have seen, these adaptations have been necessary to ensure that the game is fair and balanced. Now that we are acquainted with the different hand rankings and hand formation rules, it is time to get stuck into some strategy. In my next article on 6+ Hold’em, I will be discussing pre-flop hand selection.
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