Poker hands are ranked based on the odds against drawing them. The rarer a hand, the stronger it is.

Feb 23, 2009 it is a cut up pot (each and each participant gets a million/2 the $$$ interior the pot). Each and each participant's terrific 5 card hand is Ace intense: Ace-King-Queen-Jack-9 even however participant B has an 8 and participant A only has a 7, that's irrelevant because of the fact the 5 board enjoying cards are all larger than an 8. So they play the board and cut up the pot. R/poker: Shuffle up and deal! Official subreddit for all things poker. Question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Log in sign up. User account menu. Is 4 straight and a A a STRAIGHT HAND? Means 6,7,8,9,A or 9,10,J,Q,A or 3,4,5,6,A? He's confused by the fact that an Ace can.

Some poker variants use alternate hands, but the rank of hands shown below (and at right) is standard. Hands that are tied in terms of rank are decided based on the highest card in the hand. In other words, a Pair of Kings beats a Pair of Tens, and a Straight 7-8-9-10-J beats a Straight 3-4-5-6-7.

The lowest possible hand is no hand at all -- no pairs, no Straight, nothing. This kind of hand is known by the highest card it contains, so K-7-5-3-2 of different suits would be 'King High.'

The lowest actual hand is One Pair, made of two cards of the same value and three unrelated cards.

One Pair

Next is Two Pair: two cards of the same value, another two other cards of the same value, and one unrelated card.

If two players have Two Pair, the rank of the highest pair in each hand is the tie-breaker. If that pair is tied, the low pairs are compared. If the hands are still tied, the unmatched card in each hand is compared; high card wins. In the event of completely tied hands, the pot is split.

Three of a Kind beats Two Pair: three cards with the same value and two unrelated cards. This hand is sometimes referred to as a Set or Trips.

Three Eights, also know as a 'Set of Eights' or 'Trip-eights'

Topping Three of a Kind is a Straight, made of five cards, any suit, in uninterrupted order of value. An Ace can be either the low card or the high card in a Straight, but you can't build a Straight between a King and a Two. In other words, A-2-3-4-5 is a Straight, and so is 10-J-Q-K-A, but Q-K-A-2-3 is not.

5-6-7-8-9 Straight

Just above the Straight is the Flush: five cards of the same suit, with any value.

Flush

Next is the Full House. A Full House is basically three of a kind plus a pair. A Full House made of three Queens and a pair of Sixes would be referred to as 'Full-house, Queens over Sixes.'

Full House, Queens over Sixes

Four of a kind is a rare hand without wild cards in play. This hand consists of four cards of the same value, plus one unrelated card.

Four of a Kind

The strongest hand in poker is the Straight Flush, which is really a combination of a Straight and a Flush. This hand is made up of five cards of the same suit, in uninterrupted sequence.

Straight Flush

The legendary Royal Flush is the rarest of all poker hands. Technically, it's just a Straight Flush with an Ace as the high card, but because it's an unbeatable hand, poker players usually consider the Royal Flush a hand in its own category. Specifically, a Royal Flush is five cards of the same suit in an uninterrupted sequence that leads up to the Ace: 10-J-Q-K-A.

The elusive Royal Flush, the strongest hand in poker

A 32-card Piquet deck, lacking ranks from 2 to 6

A stripped deck (US) or shortened pack (UK) is a set of playing cards from which some cards have been removed. The removed cards are usually the pip cards. Many card games use stripped decks, and stripped decks for popular games are commercially available.

History[edit]

When playing cards first arrived in Europe during the 1370s, they had the same format as the modern standard 52-card deck, consisting of four suits each with ten pip cards and three face cards. During the late 14th and 15th centuries, the Spanish and Portuguese decks dropped the 10s while the German and Swiss packs removed the Aces to create 48-card decks. It is far easier to print 48 cards using two woodblocks than 52 cards. While the removal of the above cards was motivated by manufacturing considerations, later expulsions are the result of trying to speed up card games to make them more exciting. Trappola is the first known card game to be played with a deck that was stripped for game play. It removed all the cards from 6 to 3 to create a 36-card deck.^[1]

The most popular card game in 16th-century Europe was Piquet, played with a 36-card deck that dropped ranks from 5 to 2. Around 1700, it dropped the 6s as well to create the 32-card deck which is now the most popular format in France. 32 and 36-card decks are the most widespread in countries that were once part of the Holy Roman (the Low Countries, Germany, and Switzerland), Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires.^[1] 24-card decks to play Schnapsen are widely available in central Europe although it may be shortened to 20 in the future as that is how the modern variant is now commonly played.

The Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, and Latin Americans use mostly 40-card decks. Unlike the countries above, they drop the higher-ranking numerals so that the 7 is located immediately under the face cards. This was due to the popularity of Ombre, the game that introduced the concept of bidding.

The British and the Scandinavians are the most resistant against stripped decks, having maintained the 52-card format since receiving them in the 15th century. The British have also propagated that deck size through whist, the most popular card game of the 19th century. In the 20th century, this has been followed by contract bridge, gin rummy, canasta, and poker which all require that deck size. The British prefer games involving four players as opposed to the continental three-player games which uses smaller decks.^[2]

Asian countries also created stripped decks using their traditional playing cards. In contrast to the Western practice of removing ranks, Asians remove suits. During the Qing dynasty, the Chinese money-suited cards dropped one suit as rummy-type games became more popular.^[3] In India, the gambling game of Naqsha overtook the Ganjifatrick-taking game and many decks were made with only half of the traditional suits.

The opposite of a stripped deck is an expanded deck. Many commercial attempts have tried and failed to increase the standard deck above 52 cards.^[4] The most successful addition to the standard deck is the Joker which first appeared during the American Civil War as a Euchre trump card.^[5] The Joker has since been adopted as a wild card in a few other standard playing card games with different values and quantities depending on which game is being played.^[6]500 is a Euchre offshoot invented by the United States Playing Card Company (USPCC) during the early 20th century. To play the six-handed version, USPCC created a deck with ranks 11, 12, and 13. 500 decks are now produced by other manufacturers and are sold primarily in English-speaking countries where the game is played.^[7] A much older expanded deck is tarot, invented in 15th-century Italy, with an extra suit of trumps. Tarot card games were the most popular card games of the 18th century but have since declined. They are still played in various continental European countries with France having the largest community. Tarot decks are not immune to stripping either. The Tarocco Bolognese, Tarocco Siciliano, Industrie und Glück, and Cego decks have excised some pip cards.^[1]

7 8 9 10 Ace Poker Games

Piquet deck[edit]

A French-suited deck of 32 cards, consisting of 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace in four suits each, is used in the two-player game Piquet, which dates back to the 16th century.^[8]^[9] Games played with a piquet deck (or the equivalent German- or Swiss-suited decks) are still among the most popular in some parts of Europe. This includes belote and klaverjas (the national games of France and the Netherlands, respectively) and skat (the German national game, which is also played with the equivalent German-suited decks in some regions).^[9]Bezique is played with two piquet decks.^[9]

In poker variants[edit]

Stripped decks are used in certain pokervariants. The earliest form of po