Poker Hand Rankings

In poker, a player wins by forcing his opponents to fold their hand, or by having the best hand at showdown. A ranking of poker hands is therefore needed to determine which player holds the best hand.

In Texas Hold'em, players make the best hand using their two hole cards and the five community cards. A poker hand must consist of five cards. It does'nt matter if the player uses just one of his hole cards, both or even none of them. If the community cards, for example, form a Royal Flush, then this is the player's hand, because he cannot form a better hand using his hole cards (a Royal Flush is the best possible hand in Texas Hold'em).

When it comes to describing poker hands, the following symbols are used for the different cards.

stands for ace

stands for king

stands for queen

stands for jack

stands for ten

stands for nine

… etc. For all of the other smaller cards, just the figures are used.

Furthermore, the individual suits are displayed as symbols

stands for spades

stands for clubs

stands for hearts

stands for diamonds.

If a player has two kings as hole cards (the king of diamonds and the king of clubs), the correct representation would be . If the suits are unknown, the two kings are displayed  .

In contrast to other popular card games, the various suits (clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds) have no value in poker. Consequently, it makes no difference whether someone has the ace of clubs or the ace of diamonds unless he can form a flush (see below) with this card. If remaining players have exactly the same hand at showdown, only in different suits, the pot is split.