When playing poker with your family or friends, one of the
things you're going to need to know is how to determine the winning hand
in all scenarios.
Before we go any further, first you need to memorize or print out the order of poker hands.
Once you know that a flush beats a straight and three of a kind beats two pair, you're off to a good start.
The majority of
marked cards poker hands are simple to determine a winner from.
If one player has a flush, and no one else has a flush or better, it doesn't take much thought to figure out who's the winner.
It's once things get a little bit more complicated that people start
to get confused. First, you want to remember these rules of poker hands:
- You must make the best hand possible using exactly five cards
- All five cards are used in deciding the strength of the hand
- No cards outside of the best five have any bearing on the strength of the hand
If you're playing Texas Hold'em poker, players are allowed to use any combination of cards from their hand and/or the board cards.
This means if the absolute best five-card hand a player can make is
by using the five cards on the board, then that is his or her final hand
(this is known as playing the board).
Some Common Areas of Confusion
Here's a quick rundown of a couple common areas of confusion, and how to resolve the winner:
Two Players (or More) Have a Flush
If more than one player has a flush, you award the pot to the player
with the highest flush. This includes all five cards, for example:
Board:
Player 1:
Player 2:
In this scenario, Player 1 wins the pot. The reason is that when you look at all five cards, Player 1 has the higher flush:
Player 1:
Player 2:
All the cards are the same, until the final fifth card. Since 7
♦ is higher than 6
♦, Player1 wins the entire pot.
If instead of the 2
♠ on the board, that card was the T
♦, both players would have the same flush (playing the board) and the pot would be split.
Two Players Have Two Pairs
When two players have two pairs, it can sometimes be
confusing for people to know who won.
Take this example:
Board:
Player 1:
Player 2:
In this scenario, Player1 wins
infrared contactlenses the entire pot. Two pair is always
ranked by the value of the highest pair first, and only if that pair is
the same for both players do you rank by the second pair.
If both of two pairs are identical, it will be the kicker that will
decide the winner (the highest-value fifth card is the kicker).
In this scenario because the two paired on the river, Player 1 has two pair - A
♦ A
♣ 2
♠ 2
♣ with the kicker K
♦.
Player 2 has the lower two pair - K
♦ K
♥ Q
♠ Q
♥ with the kicker 3
♥. Aces are higher than kings, so Player 1 wins the entire pot.
Who Wins?
Board:
Player 1:
Player 2:
Take a second to figure it out. This is a very bad beat, as once the
river falls both players now have four of a kind with nines.
Only Player 1, who up until this point had nothing special, has the highest kicker with an ace.
Even though Player 2 flopped a full house - K
♠ K
♣ K
♦ 9
♠ 9
♣ - once the fourth nine fell, he was now playing four-of-a-kind nines with a king kicker.
Player 1 wins the whole pot.
The Omaha Rule
The rules in determining the best hand in Omaha are exactly the same as in Texas Hold'em with one additional rule:
- Every player must make the best five-card hand using exactly two cards from his hand (you're dealt four cards in Omaha) and three cards from the board.
This means that if there are four hearts on the board and you only have one in your hand you
do not have a flush.
You must always
use exactly two cards from your hand.
