One of the first things you need to learn before ever even sitting down at the poker table is the ranking of poker hands. Without knowing the ranking of poker hands you’re not going to know what you have and you’re not going to know how good your hand is. This isn’t going to work when you’re playing poker so read through this list of the possible hands you can make in poker.

In poker you can only make the best five card hand possible no matter what type of poker game you’re playing. The suits do have some influence in poker as well as you can make flushes and straight flushes which need to be all the same suit. Let’s now go through every possible hand on Full Tilt from best to worst so that you know how well your hand ranks.

* Royal Flush – A/K/Q/J/10 of the same suit

* Straight Flush – Any five card straight of the same suit

* Four of a Kind – Any four of the same card

* Full House – Any pair and set together is a full house

* Flush – Any five cards of the same suit

* Straight – Any five cards running in sequential order

* Three of a Kind – Any three of the same card

* Two Pair – Any two pairs in the same hand

* Pair – Any two of the same card

* High Card – When you have nothing above your hand is ranked by your highest card

There are lots of different poker games that you can play nowadays and the hand rankings are the same for each game. The only difference is that some hands appear more often in certain games so the rarity of hitting certain hands increase and decrease based on the poker game you’re playing.

In Holdem you’ll see full houses sometimes and then flushes and straights fairly often. You won’t often see a four of a kind or anything higher then that in Holdem, but then in games like Omaha full houses, straight flushes and four of a kinds appear much more often.

No matter what poker game you’re playing, you’re not going to win very often with a high card or pair. Even two pair in most games won’t win nine out of ten times so you need to be cautious with these types of hands. Sometimes pairs and two pairs will win though and you’ll need to determine whether or not your hand is good enough based on the player you’re playing against and how the hand was played out.

Learning the hand rankings in poker is important, but it’s the least of your concerns once you hit the tables. I don’t recommend that you start playing poker until you have read some strategy articles on the poker game that you’re choosing to play. You should always spend time reading strategy as a poker player, but when you’re a new player it’s vital that you learn some beginner strategy. There are plenty of strategy articles you can start reading today.