Poker: the rules every variant shares

Every poker variant is decided by five-card hands. Hand ranking, from highest: straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, high card. Poker is a family rather than a single game: the variants differ in how the cards arrive — two private cards and five shared ones in Texas hold'em and Omaha, cards dealt face up one at a time in the stud games, a single exchange in five-card draw — and Chicago even scores the hands before playing them out as tricks. What every one of them shares is the ranking above.

Tied hands

When two players hold the same type of hand, the card ranks decide. A pair of kings beats a pair of tens, and if the pairs are equal you compare the side cards. With two pair you compare the highest pair first, then the lower pair, and finally the fifth card. Straights are compared on their highest card, flushes on the highest card and then the next highest. In traditional poker the suits never matter.

Aces and straights

The ace is high and low at once. It is the top of the straight ten, jack, queen, king, ace, and the bottom of ace, two, three, four, five — the lowest straight there is. A straight never wraps round the corner: queen, king, ace, two, three is no hand at all.

How rare each hand is

Out of 2,598,960 possible five-card hands: Straight flush: 40 Four of a kind: 624 Full house: 3,744 Flush: 5,108 Straight: 10,200 Three of a kind: 54,912 Two pair: 123,552 One pair: 1,098,240 High card: 1,302,540

The ranking is simply the order of rarity: the harder a hand is to make, the more hands it beats.

How a winning hand is rewarded differs — some variants bet chips, others score points. That is covered in each variant's own rules.