Hand Rankings in Poker Games
One of the things that almost all poker games share is hand rankings. Hand rankings help determine who holds the winning hand. For certain poker games, the highest hand does not always win, but the rankings still do come in very handy during a showdown.
In any poker game, the cards are themselves individually ranked. The suits usually do not matter in this case. In poker, the lowest ranking card is the two. The ranks grow higher numerically, and among the royal cards, the jack is the lowest, the queen is the middle, and the king is the highest. Of all the cards though, the ace is considered the highest card of all; often having an ace can prove to be the deciding factor on whether or not a player gets to win the pot. This is perhaps why the term "having an ace up their sleeve" means having a hidden advantage.
The highest possible hand a player can have in a game of poker is called the royal flush, which is a straight flush -a hand with all five cards in numbered order and the same suit- which features the ace as the highest card in the hand, and a ten as the lowest.
On the other hand, the lowest possible hand that a player can have is one that does not have any matches, is not in numerical order, or has more than one suit. This kind of hand is referred to by a number of different, often disparaging names, such as "garbage" or "nothing." The most innocuous ways of referring to this kind of hand are as a "high card" hand or a "no-pair" hand.
A one-pair hand, on the other hand, is one where two cards have the same ranking, and the rest do not have any matches. One example of a one-pair hand would have the following cards: four, four, seven, nine, jack. Two one-pair hands are judged according to which and has the higher pair.
A two pair hand defeats a one-pair hand. As the name might suggest, the two-pair hand has two sets of cards that have the same rank, and one unmatched card. The three of a kind hand beats the two pair hand. Three of a kind hands have three cards of the same rank, and two that do not have any matches. A straight is generally a hand that is considered higher than a three of a kind. Straights are cards that are numbered consecutively, but do not all have the same suit.
