Best Poker Hands
Keen poker players will fully understand the ranking of various poker hands. All poker hands consist only of the best five cards available. In games where a player has more than five cards and selects five to form a poker hand, the remaining cards do not play any part in the ranking. Poker ranks are always based on five cards only.
The best poker hands are generally those hands that form a flush, four-of-a-kind, full-house or similar strong suit.
The highest ranking of all hands in poker is a Royal Flush and this consists of the Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten of the same suit. Four-of-a-kind poker hands rank second only to the Royal Flush and in terms of ranking the best poker hands, four aces would obviously beat four tens and so on and so forth.
A full-house refers to three cards of the same rank, combined with a pair of another rank. For example, KKK33. The higher ranking three cards determines which full house beats another - 77766 beats 222AA.
In standard poker, there is no ranking of suits. If two poker hands are identical and only differ in the individual suits then these hands are considered equal. In certain parts of Europe the rules differ and this enables the identification of the best poker hands to be determined down to individual suit level. For example, in Italy the running order for card suits is Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs and Spades and these ranks are designed to split winners from the individual poker hand level.
