Poker is becoming increasingly popular with more and more people not only playing the game but also watching television programs like the world series of poker. In this article, I describe the order in which poker hands are ranked, starting with the highest and also the probability that players have of being dealt that particular hand.

A straight flush

This is the best hand you can obtain and is the dream cards for any poker player. That is not to say that you always win a lot of chips with this hand and most players will tend to slow play this type of hand in an attempt to trap their opponent.

A straight flush is five cards of the same suit in a sequence. The higher the top card, the higher the ranking of that hand. Therefore ten, jack, queen, king, ace, which is often known as a royal flush is the best hand in poker.

The probability of this hand is around one in sixty five thousand.

Four of a kind

This is where you have four cards of the same rank or number which are the same. As with the above the higher the rank of the four cards, the higher the value. Therefore four aces are the highest rank of all of the possible four of a kinds.

The probability of this hand is around one in four thousand, one hundred and sixty five.

Full house

A full house is where you have three cards of one rank or number and two cards of another rank. As with the above, the higher the rank of these two sets, the higher the value. Therefore if you have three aces and two kings you will have the highest rank of flush. To explain it in even more simpler terms, the one with the highest ranking set of three cards, wins.

The probability of this hand is around one in six hundred and ninety four.

Flush

This is where you have five cards of the same suit but not in a sequence. A flush which includes an ace has the highest value. If there are two hands on the table which both have a flush with an ace, it then goes to the second highest card to see who wins etc.

The probability of this hand is around one in five hundred and nine.

Straight

This is where you have five cards in sequence which are in different suites. The highest straight is again the one which has the highest card at the top.

The probability of this hand is around one in two hundred and fifty five.

Three of a kind

This is the same as the four of the kind explanation apart from the fact that this is where you have three cards of the same rank or number.

The probability of this hand is around one in forty seven.

Two pairs

This is where you have two cards of one rank and two cards of another. There is also an odd card which can sometimes come into play.

If there are two players on the table with two pairs the highest ranking pair wins. If both players have the same highest ranking pair, the highest second ranking pair wins. If both players have the same set of two pairs, it is the one with the highest odd card that wins.

The probability of this hand is around one in 21.

One pair

This is where you only have two cards of the same rank. When two players on the table have the same pair, the other three cards come into play, with the highest card winning etc.

The probability of this hand is around one in 2.4.

High card

This is where you basically have nothing but a high card. When two players on the same table have just a high card, the one with the highest card wins etc.

The probability of this hand is around one in two.

I hope this has explained the rankings of the different poker hands to you and made it a bit more easier to understand.

Poker is a great game to play, be careful however only to bet what you can afford to lose.

I personally prefer to play on the internet rather than in the casino. I basically play for fun, and merely hope to make some extra money for myself.

I am quite a patient player who is willing to wait for a good hand to come. I think this is an important skill to have in poker and it has helped me to do quite well over the last twelve months.

One small tip is to avoid playing poker when you are drunk. Maybe it is just me but I always seem to play with a lot more aggression and less patience, when I am quite drunk. This may work for some people but always seems to end up with me losing quite a lot of money.

Online gaming sites are always changing — upgrading software, improving features and functionality, getting rid of bugs and bad ideas, inventing new offerings, etc. — all in a furious effort to remain competitive. A consistent leader of the online gambling pack, Party Poker, is often at the cutting edge of these new and improved releases. Not only has Party Poker done it again with their latest upgrade, but with the elimination of one of their programs (skins), and brand new partnerships with other leading edge online casinos and online poker rooms.

The first thing to be aware of with Party Pokers new upgrade is that all the bugs may not yet have been completely ironed out (which simply means updates to the upgrades will be forthcoming). There have been some reports that uninstalling earlier versions of the Party Poker software after installing the new upgrade could lead to problems, so we would hold off on that uninstall if we were you. Of course, now that we said that, some of you may be wondering why you would even bother downloading the upgrade. Heres why:

re: Lobby
- Games are listed by blinds rather than maximum buy-in
- Hands per Hour are included amongst the lobby stats
- Cash games are divided into Limit, No Limit, and Pot Limit
- More limits added to Cash Games
- Players available cash and Party Points are prominently displayed
- Filters are given to help narrow down your selection of tablesgames
- Tables are given names rather than numbers
- The news ticker has been made more prominent
- Tournaments are divided into groups for easier searching

re: Tournaments
- Tournament buy-ins now include entry fees
- Tournament players start with more chips (Sit-and-Gos: 2,000, Multi-Table: 3,000, Events: 5,000)
- Theres a new tournament blind structure
- More buy-ins available for Sit-and-Gos
- Sit-and-Go levels have changed so that now they are based on time rather than hands played
- The payout structure is flatter

re: Party Poker Accounts
- Players can easily switch between Party Poker and Party Casino all from one place
- The Account Page has been streamlined for greater efficiency and ease of use

re: Miscellaneous features
- Players can shrink windows for multi-tabling
- Optional automatic window tiling and cascading

As you may know, a skin is an independent site that uses another sites software (in this case Party Pokers) in exchange for a percentage of revenues. PartyGaming, parent company of Party Poker as well as host of Party Casino and Party Bingo has decided to terminate its skins, instead purchasing those sites as secondary PartyGaming sites (and presumably raking in 100% of the revenues).

In place of their newly defunct skins, Party Poker is now joined by the following new members of the PartyGaming family: IntertopsPoker, MultiPoker, PlanetLuck Casino, PokerNow, and Starluck Casino Online. Party Pokers most recent acquisition, as of February 2006, was former Party Poker skin Empire Poker, which they purchased for 250 million. Those Party Poker folks are building quite the Empire (some bad puns just beg to be voiced).

Party Poker, who according to Reuters signed up a record number of new players last year, is a publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange.

Badugi is a poker variant that has grown increasingly popular during the last few years. It originates from Asia, but has not spread to the rest of the world until recently. It is today played online as well as offline by poker enthusiasts all over the world. Learning Badugi is very easy if you already master other poker games, such as Holdem Poker.

Badugi is a four card game with three draws. The players with the lowest hand will win the pot. Unlike other poke variants, getting one pair, two pairs, three of a kind or four of a kind is undesirable in Badugi. Getting two or more cards from the same suit is also bad. The best hand is therefore containing cards from four different suits, and no cards should have the same rank. Such a hand where all the cards are of different suit and rank is called a Badugi!

When playing Badugi, you will be dealt four cards. The first card will be dealt to the player on the small blind, and the dealing will then proceed clockwise. Only one card is dealt to each player at a time. The betting will depend on which type of Badugi you are playing. There exist three different variants: Limit Badugi, Pot Limit Badugi and Half Pot Limit Badugi.

In Limit Badugi, all the bets are made in incremental units. During the first and second round, each player is allowed to bet the lower level bet. If you for instance play 4 8 Badugi, you will be allowed to bet 4 during the first and second round. During the third and fourth round, you can be the higher level, i.e. 8. Just as in the other Limit Poker variants, betting will be capped at four bets per round in Limit Badugi.

In Pot Limit Badugi, bets are not made in incremental units. You can instead raise your bet any amount as long as you bet no lower than the minimum bet and no higher than the amount of money currently found in the pot. The minimum bet is determined by the big blind. Lets say that the small blind is 4 and the big blind 8. One caller has already bet 8. The next player can then choose to bet as low as 8. The total value of the current pot is 4 +8 + 8. The player can therefore also choose to bet 4 +8 + 8 + 8, since the maximum bet is based on the current pot on top of the initial call. The maximum bet in this situation is therefore 28.

Half Pot Limit Badugi is very similar to Pot Limit Badugi, but a player is only allowed to raise the value of half the current pot. Lets say the pot contains 2 + 4 + 4. Half of 2 + 4 + 4+ 4 is 7. The next player can therefore raise 7+ 4 = 11. The lowest allowed bet is determined by the big blind, just as in Pot Limit Badugi.

Poker has a mysterious past and cannot be definitely traced to a certain point in the history of card playing. It resembles a Persian game, which went by the name of NAS and may have been brought to the states via sailing ships the anchored in New Orleans. French Canadians who came down to New Orleans and helped to settle the city may have also brought poker to New Orleans. From the city of New Orleans, the game traveled up river on the Mississippi as the gambling game of choice on paddle wheelers. The steamboat game that was played at the time was 5-card stud. This game grew in popularity and was taken to heart by the soldiers and frontiersmen that came into contact with it in the saloons that were located on the river. From there it moved west and east, as travelers liked the game as a game to gamble on among friends. The game really moved west during the outbreak of the gold rush and then grew in popularity during the Civil War. Between the soldiers playing the game and the fact that every saloon offered the game to its patrons, the country became hooked on poker.

After the Civil War, the game changed to 5-card draw as you could get more bets in on a single hand and it brought the art of bluffing to a new height since a player was not showing any of their cards. 7-card stud then replaced this game and then the game of Texas Holdem came into being and is now the most popular game of poker of all time.

Poker is played by all classes of people and is one of the most popular games played in Washington DC by the politicians and even the President in the time of Truman. With this acceptance by both high society and the common man, the game as we now see it on TV has a following that is hard to ignore

The birth of the Internet and the addition to this service of poker has led to the astronomical numbers of people playing online on any given day. This one thing opened the floodgates of players from all over the world. Now days you can play in the local poker room or online at a time of your choosing. Your choice of game can be varied online as most online poker rooms offer a selection of games as well as limits for those games. You can also choose between a ring game or playing in a tournament. The prize money offered and the entry fees differentiate the tournament choices. There is a tournament for any player.

The game has come along way from the early days on the Mississippi and no one could have predicted how this game would permeate the various classes of people the way it has in the last 25 years.