Pictured, we have a pair of aces, and our five-card hand is A-A-K-Q-J. It's rare for high card to be the best hand if there's been a lot of betting Pair Pictured here we have high card Ace, and the player's full 5-card hand is A-K-Q-J-8.

If multiple players make it to showdown with only a high card, the highest card wins.

When you've got nothing else, the highest card plays. So here is a breakdown of every hand, starting from the worst hand, High Card, to the best hand, a Straight Flush. The best possible five-card hand is the goal, and we'll outline some scenarios below where you can see how this works in practice. Sometimes only one of your cards needs to be used, and sometimes you end up using just the community cards, and none from your hand. One important thing to note about Texas Hold 'em: In this variant you get two hole cards and five community cards, so seven cards total, BUT your job is to make the best possible five-card hand, which isn't always your hole cards plus three community cards. If you need a deeper refresher on the rules of Hold 'em, check out this article. There are tons of poker games, but we're going focus on the most popular for this article: No Limit Texas Hold 'em. Put simply, in poker, your job is to make the best possible five-card hand, ranging from a high card to a royal flush.Īt showdown (when the hand is over), the player with the best hand takes the pot, so knowing the ranking of hands is pretty important. We've compiled a definitive poker hand ranking list to specifically show what each possible hand can look like in poker's most popular game: Texas Hold 'em.

Poker hand rankings texas holdem