Seven-Card Stud and Texas Hold’em are the two most popular forms of Poker in which the highest ranking hand wins. These games are played with a 52-card deck — there is no joker — composed of four suits: spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs.
Each suit is equal in value, and there are 13 ranks in each suit. The ace is the highest ranking card in a suit, followed by king, queen, jack, and 10 through 2 (or deuce), in descending order. An ace may also be used as the lowest ranking card in a 5-high straight (5-4-3-2-A), which is also called a wheel or bicycle.
Small Straight In Poker
![Poker Hands Straight With Ace Poker Hands Straight With Ace](/uploads/1/2/5/2/125275689/560922444.png)
Someone who has certainly played more than 34,000 hands is Phil Hellmuth. And the Poker Brat just recently managed to get dealt pocket aces back-to-back live on television during Poker Night in America. But, of course, getting aces is not everything. You first need to get your stack in and you need your hand to hold up. If two players have a straight flush then the highest card wins. The highest possible straight flush, and the best hand in poker, is an ace high straight flush, also known as a Royal Flush. A royal flush consists of a straight from ten to the ace with all five cards of the same suit (A♥ K♥ Q♥ J♥ 10♥). A royal flush is exceptionally.
Although Stud and Hold’em are played with seven cards, the best hand refers to the best five-card hand. Hand rankings are a function of probability. The rarer the hand, the more valuable it is. See the figure for an at-a-glance look at hand ranking in descending value.
Royal flush; straight flush
A royal flush is simply an ace-high straight flush and is the best possible hand in Poker. There are only four of them: Ace through ten of each suit.
A straight flush is any five cards of the same suit in sequence, such as the 9 through 5 of hearts or the queen through 8 of diamonds.
Four-of-a-kind
![Poker Hands Straight With Ace Poker Hands Straight With Ace](/uploads/1/2/5/2/125275689/962131450.jpg)
Four-of-a-kind, or quads, is a five-card hand composed of all the cards of one rank, plus one unrelated card. The higher the rank, the better the hand. For example, four kings beats four jacks.
Full house
Three cards of one rank and a pair of another make a full house. The rank of the full house is determined by the three-card grouping, not the pair. A hand like three 9s and two 5s is referred to as “nines full of fives.”
Flush
A flush is any five cards of the same suit. The cards are not in sequence. If they were in sequence, it would be a straight flush. If there is more than one flush, the winning hand is determined by the rank order of the highest card, or cards, in the flush. A flush composed of the ace, queen, jack, and 6 and 5 of hearts is higher than an ace, queen, jack, and 4 and 3 of spades.
Straight
Five sequenced cards, not all of the same suit, compose a straight. If more than one straight is present, the highest card in the sequence determines the winning hand. A jack-high straight of the jack through 7 of diamonds will beat a 9 through 5 of spades nine-high straight.
Three-of-a-kind
Three cards of the same rank, along with two unrelated cards is called three-of-a-kind. This hand is also referred to as trips, or a set. If you held three 8s, a king, and a 4 you could refer to it as “trip 8s” or “a set of 8s.”
Two pair
Two cards of one rank along with two cards of another rank and one unrelated card composes two pair. The higher rank determines which two pair is superior. If two players hold two pair and each has the same high pair, then the rank of the second pair determines the winner. If both players hold the same two pair, then the rank of the unrelated side card determines the winning hand. If the hand is identical, then the players split the pot. For example, queens and 8s is superior to queens and 5s.
One pair
One pair is simply two cards of one rank and three unrelated cards. If two players hold the same pair, then the value of the unrelated side cards determines the winning hand.
No pair
No pair consists of five unrelated cards. When no player has a pair, then the rank order of the unrelated cards determines the winning hand. For example, if Harry has A-Q-9-6-3 and Adrien has A-J-10-3-2, then Harry wins because A-Q ranks higher than A-J.
Low hands
In split-pot games, like Omaha/8, the best low hand composed of five unrelated cards with the rank of 8 or lower, captures half the pot. A hand like 7-6-4-3-A beats 7-6-5-3-A, but will lose to 7-4-3-2-A.
Determining the best low hand takes a bit of practice, but if you always begin with the highest of the low cards and continue in descending order, you can’t go wrong.
Simply Scheme:Introducing Computer Science 2/e Copyright (C) 1999 MIT
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The idea of this project is to invent a procedure
poker-value
that works like this:As you can see, we are representing cards and hands just as in theBridge project, except that poker hands have only fivecards.[1]
Here are the various kinds of poker hands, in decreasing order of value:
• | Royal flush: ten, jack, queen, king, and ace, all of the same suit |
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• | Straight flush: five cards of sequential rank, all of the same suit |
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• | Four of a kind: four cards of the same rank |
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• | Full house: three cards of the same rank, and two of a second rank |
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Poker Hands Straight Ace 2
• | Flush: five cards of the same suit, not sequential rank |
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• | Straight: five cards of sequential rank, not all of the same suit |
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• | Three of a kind: three cards of the same rank, no other matches |
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• | Two pair: two pairs of cards, of two different ranks |
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• | Pair: two cards of the same rank, no other matches |
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• | Nothing: none of the above |
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An ace can be the lowest card of a straight (ace, 2, 3, 4, 5) orthe highest card of a straight (ten, jack, queen, king, ace), but a straightcan't 'wrap around'; a hand with queen, king, ace, 2, 3 would be worthless(unless it's a flush).
Notice that most of the hand categories are either entirely about the ranksof the cards (pairs, straight, full house, etc.) or entirely about thesuits (flush). It's a good idea to begin your program by separating therank information and the suit information. To check for a straight flush orroyal flush, you'll have to consider both kinds of information.
In what form do you want the suit information? Really, all you need is atrue or false value indicating whether or not the hand is a flush, becausethere aren't any poker categories like 'three of one suit and two ofanother.'
What about ranks? There are two kinds of hand categories involving ranks: the ones about equal ranks (pairs, full house) and the ones about sequentialranks (straight). You might therefore want the rank information in twoforms. A sentence containing all of the ranks in the hand, in sorted order,will make it easier to find a straight. (You still have to be careful aboutaces.)
For the equal-rank categories, what you want is some data structure thatwill let you ask questions like 'are there three cards of the same rankin this hand?' We ended up using a representation like this:
One slightly tricky aspect of this solution is that we spelledout the numbers of cards,
one
to four
, instead of using the moreobvious (1 Q 2 3 2 4)
. The reason, as you can probably tell just bylooking at the latter version, is that it would lead to confusion betweenthe names of the ranks, most of which are digits, and the numbers ofoccurrences, which are also digits. More specifically, by spelling out thenumbers of occurrences, we can use member?
to ask easily if there isa three-of-a-kind rank in the hand.You may find it easier to begin by writing a version that returns only thename of a category, such as
three of a kind
, and only after you getthat to work, revise it to give more specific results such as threesixes
.Extra Work for Hotshots
In some versions of poker, each player gets seven cards and can choose anyfive of the seven to make a hand. How would it change your program if theargument were a sentence of seven cards? (For example, in five-card pokerthere is only one possible category for a hand, but in seven-card you haveto pick the best category that can be made from your cards.) Fix yourprogram so that it works for both five-card and seven-card hands.
Another possible modification to the program is to allow for playing with'wild' cards. If you play with 'threes wild,' it means that if there isa three in your hand you're allowed to pretend it's whatever card you like.For this modification, your program will require a second argument indicatingwhich cards are wild. (When you play with wild cards, there's thepossibility of having five of a kind. This beats a straight flush.)
[1] Later on we'll think about seven-card variants of poker.BACKchapter thread NEXT
Brian Harvey, [email protected]