Texas Hold’em deals you two private cards and five shared ones. Your hand is the best five cards you can make from those seven, and you do not have to use either of your own.
That last part causes more confusion than anything else in the game, so start there.
Best five of seven
Seven cards are available; exactly five make your hand. You might use both of your cards, one, or neither.
If the board shows a straight and you hold nothing relevant, you have that straight — and so does everyone else still in the pot. The hand is split. This is called playing the board, and beginners routinely fold hands that were tied for the lead.
The rankings, strongest first
- Royal flush — ten, jack, queen, king, ace, all one suit.
- Straight flush — five in sequence, all one suit.
- Four of a kind — all four of one rank.
- Full house — three of one rank and two of another.
- Flush — five of one suit, in any order.
- Straight — five in sequence, mixed suits.
- Three of a kind — three of one rank.
- Two pair
- One pair
- High card — none of the above.
Why the order is what it is
It is not arbitrary. The rankings run in order of how rare each hand is: the harder it is to make, the more it beats. Four of a kind outranks a full house because it happens less often, and nothing more mystical than that.
This is also why the two most commonly confused hands sit where they do. A flush beats a straight, because with five shared cards a straight is easier to complete than a flush. Getting this backwards is the single most expensive ranking error in poker.
Ties, and the kicker
When two players hold the same class of hand, the higher one wins — a king-high flush beats a queen-high flush.
When they are still level, the kicker decides it: the highest remaining card that fills out your five. If you hold ace-king and someone holds ace-nine, and an ace comes on the board, you both have a pair of aces — and your king plays as the kicker while their nine does not. You win a pot that looks tied.
Kickers are quietly one of the biggest sources of lost money for new players, because ace-anything feels strong and is frequently the second-best hand in exactly this way.
Three things that catch people out
Aces are high and low for straights. Ace-2-3-4-5 is a straight, the lowest one. So is ten-jack-queen-king-ace, the highest. But it does not wrap — queen-king-ace-2-3 is nothing at all.
Suits never break a tie. There is no ranking of suits in Hold’em. Two identical hands of different suits split the pot evenly. Spades are not worth more than clubs.
Four to a flush is not a flush. You need five. Four of a suit plus a high card is a high-card hand, and it loses to any pair.
Reading the board
The habit worth building early is to look at the shared cards and ask what the best possible hand out there is, before you look at your own cards again.
Three of one suit on the board means a flush is available to somebody. A pair on the board means a full house or four of a kind is available. Your strong hand is only strong relative to what the board makes possible — and the board is public information, sitting there for everyone equally.
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