Poker rules and hand rankings

What you are actually trying to do

Poker is played with a standard 52-card pack, no jokers, usually between two and ten players. Every hand builds a pot in the middle of the table, and there are only two ways to win it. Either you show the best five-card hand at the end, or you bet hard enough that everyone else gives up before the end. That second route is why poker is a game of judgement and not a lottery.

Almost every game you will meet in Malaysia, online or in a home game, is Texas Hold'em. Each player is dealt two private cards, five shared cards are turned face up in the middle, and you make your best hand out of those seven. You can use both of your private cards, one of them, or in rare cases neither. If you want the full walkthrough of that game specifically, read the guide to Texas poker after this page.

Some rules below are universal across every poker variant, and some are specific to Hold'em. Hand rankings, betting actions and showdown behaviour never change. The number of cards you are dealt and the number of betting rounds do.

Poker hand rankings, strongest to weakest

This is the part you have to know cold, because every other decision in poker depends on it. The table runs from the strongest hand at the top to the weakest at the bottom. The last column shows how many of the 2,598,960 possible five-card deals from a fresh 52-card pack make that hand, which is a plain way of seeing why the order is what it is.

Suits do not rank in standard poker. Spades are not worth more than hearts. If two players end up with exactly the same five-card hand, they split the pot evenly, and the dealer cuts an odd chip to whoever sits closest to the left of the button. Suit order does exist in some Asian card games, including Big Two, but carrying that habit into poker is one of the most common beginner errors.

When two players hold the same category of hand, you compare the ranks inside it one card at a time. Two players with a pair of Kings look at their next-highest card, which is called the kicker. K-K-Q-7-4 beats K-K-J-9-8 because the Queen outranks the Jack. Only five cards ever count, so a sixth or seventh card in your hand is simply ignored, and a strong kicker cannot rescue a weak pair against a straight.

An Ace works at both ends of a straight but never in the middle. A-K-Q-J-10 is the highest straight, often called Broadway. A-2-3-4-5 is the lowest, usually called the wheel, and it counts as a five-high straight, so it loses to 6-5-4-3-2. A hand like Q-K-A-2-3 is not a straight at all. The Ace does not wrap around.

How a single hand plays out

Before any cards come out, two players post forced bets called blinds. Those blind bets guarantee there is always something in the middle worth competing for, so nobody can sit and fold every hand for free. The player to the immediate left of the dealer button posts the small blind, and the next player along posts the big blind, normally double the small. In tournaments an ante is added later, a small extra amount every player contributes to build the pot faster.

A Hold'em hand then runs through four betting rounds:

• Preflop. Everyone receives two face-down cards. Betting starts with the player to the left of the big blind, because the blinds have already put money in. You may fold, call the big blind, or raise.
• The flop. Three community cards are turned face up together. The flop betting round starts with the first player still in the hand to the left of the button, and from here on that player may check instead of betting.
• The turn. A fourth community card is added. Another round of betting, usually at a larger size because the pot has grown.
• The river. The fifth and final community card. The last round of betting, and the last chance to bluff someone off a better hand.

If two or more players are still in after the river, the hand goes to showdown. The last player who bet or raised shows first. If the river was checked around, the first player left of the button shows first. Everyone makes their best hand and the strongest one takes the pot. If everybody else folds at any earlier point, the last player standing wins without showing anything, which is exactly why bluffing works.

What you can do when the action reaches you

Poker gives you a small, fixed set of choices. Every clever play you will ever see is built out of these five.

• Check. Pass the action along without putting money in. Only available if nobody has bet yet in the current round.
• Bet. Put chips in first. Everyone after you must at least match it to stay in the hand.
• Call. Match the current bet exactly.
• Raise. Increase the bet. A raise must be at least the size of the previous bet or raise, so if someone bets RM20, the smallest raise is to RM40.
• Fold. Throw your cards away and give up any money already in the pot. Costs nothing more, and it is the right answer far more often than beginners think.

Going all-in simply means betting every chip you have left. It is not a separate action so much as the end point of a bet, call or raise. If you do not have enough chips to call, you can still go all-in for less than the current bet: you win the part of the pot you covered, and the rest is set aside as a side pot for the players who had more chips. The vocabulary around these actions gets deep quickly, and the poker terms glossary covers the ones that come up at a live table.

Table positions, and why the button matters

Seats in poker are not equal. Position describes when you have to act, and acting last is a real, measurable advantage, because you make your decision knowing what everyone else did first.

The button moves one seat clockwise after every hand, so nobody keeps the good seat for long, and everybody pays the blinds equally over a full orbit. Being in position means acting after your opponent for the rest of the hand. Being out of position means guessing first. If you take only one strategic idea away from this page, take that one: play more hands when you are on or near the button, and fewer from the blinds and under the gun.

No-limit, pot-limit and fixed-limit

The rules of the hand stay the same. What changes between these three is how much you are allowed to put in at once, and that changes the entire feel of the game.

• No-limit. You can bet anything from the minimum up to every chip in front of you, at any point. This is the standard format for Texas Hold'em and the one nearly every online table uses.
• Pot-limit. The largest bet allowed is the current size of the pot, counting your own call first. Standard for Omaha. It keeps pots big without letting one player shove everything in on the first round.
• Fixed-limit. Bets come in set increments, and a round is normally capped at a bet plus three raises. A far gentler game, and the easiest place to learn without losing a stack in one hand.

Table stakes applies everywhere: you can only win or lose the chips you had on the table when the hand started. You cannot pull more money out of your pocket halfway through a hand, and nobody can bet you off a pot by naming an amount larger than your stack.

The variants you will actually meet

Once the rankings and the betting rounds make sense, moving between poker games is mostly a matter of learning how many cards you get.

• Texas Hold'em. Two private cards, five community cards, four betting rounds. The default game everywhere.
• Omaha. Four private cards, five community cards, and the rule that catches everyone out: you must use exactly two of your own cards and exactly three from the board. Four hearts in your hand is not a flush.
• Seven-Card Stud. No community cards at all. Each player gets their own seven cards, some face up, and makes the best five. Stud was the main game in poker rooms before Hold'em took over.
• Five-Card Draw. Five private cards, one chance to discard and replace some of them, then a showdown. The version most people first play at home.
• Short deck. Hold'em with the twos through fives removed. Because flushes are harder to make with 36 cards, a flush beats a full house in most short-deck rules. Check the house rules before you sit down.

Rules beginners get wrong

These are not strategy errors, they are misreadings of the rules, and they cost real money at real tables.

• Thinking suits break a tie. They do not. Identical hands split the pot.
• Thinking you must use both hole cards in Hold'em. You do not. If the board is the best five cards available to you, you play the board, and at worst you split with everyone else.
• Reading A-2-3-4-5 as an Ace-high hand. It is a five-high straight, and the weakest straight there is.
• Miscounting a full house. Compare the three-card part first. Sixes full of Aces loses to Sevens full of Twos.
• The string bet. In a live poker room you must either announce your raise or put the whole amount in with one motion. Reaching back for more chips after your hand has left the stack gets your bet ruled a call.
• Acting out of turn. Even folding early gives information to the players still to act, and most rooms will hold you to whatever you signalled.

All six are misreadings of the rules rather than bad strategy, and all six are cheapest to make at a play-money table. What changes once the chips stand for something is a separate subject, and the real money poker page is where we treat it.

Playing safely, and the legal position in Malaysia

Gambling is tightly restricted in Malaysia. The Common Gaming Houses Act 1953 and the Betting Act 1953 are the two main pieces of legislation, and Muslims face an additional prohibition under Sharia law that applies regardless of what the civil statutes say. Nothing on this page should be read as advice that any particular form of real-money play is permitted where you live. If you are unsure, that is a question for a lawyer, not a poker site.

Whatever the setting, the money side of poker deserves the same care as the rules side. Set an amount you would not mind losing before you sit down, keep it separate from money you need, and stop when you hit it rather than when you feel like stopping. Poker rewards patience, and every experienced player has had long stretches where correct decisions still lost. Playing while angry, tired or chasing a loss is where most of the damage happens. This site is for learning the game. It is 18+, and if it has stopped being enjoyable, it is time to take a break.