Hand rankings and showdowns

High card, one pair, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush. A royal flush is not a tenth category, it is the highest straight flush there is.

The order follows from how many ways each one can be made. There are more distinct straights in a deck than flushes, so a flush beats a straight. Learn it that way once and you never have to recall the list under pressure, because you can rebuild it.

Inside a category, the ranks decide. Two pair aces and threes beats two pair kings and queens, because the top pair is compared first. The same rule runs all the way down.

Two in your hand, five on the board. Your hand is the strongest five-card combination available from those seven. Both of your cards may play, or one, or neither.

Almost every beginner mistake at showdown is a version of forgetting this. A pair in your hand does not add anything to a straight already on the board. A fourth card to your flush on the board does not give you a flush unless you hold the fifth. Read the seven, find the best five, and ignore whose they are.

A pair is two cards, so three more come along to fill the five. Those are kickers, and they are compared one at a time from the top until one of them is bigger.

This is the whole case against playing weak aces out of position. You will flop top pair and be delighted, and the times somebody plays back at you are exactly the times they hold the same top pair with a better card beside it. The hand that looked strongest is the hand losing the most.

There is no rule that gives the pot to the better hole cards, or to spades, or to the player who bet. If the best available five are identical, the money is divided.

The case that catches people is the board that is already a complete hand. Then everybody still in has that hand and nothing anyone holds matters unless it beats it outright.