The winner is whoever makes the best five card hand from their two cards and the five in the middle. If two players make the same hand, you compare card by card down to the fifth. If all five are equal, the pot is split. Suits never break a tie.
Below are the fifteen cases that get argued about in a home game, each settled in two lines. If you are in a hurry, the one you want is almost certainly the first.
Only five cards count
There are seven on the table between yours and the middle, but a hand is five. The sixth and seventh do not exist for anything, including tie breaks.
You compare from the top down
First, which hand each player has: a flush beats a straight, a straight beats three of a kind. If both have the same hand, you compare the highest card of each, then the next, all the way to the fifth.
Suits count for nothing
No suit sits above another and no tie break is ever settled by looking at suits. If you get to the end and all five cards match, it is a tie and the pot is split.
No. Suits never break a tie, and spades are not worth more than clubs. This is the most frequent argument in any home game and it comes from other card games, where one suit does outrank the rest. Poker has no trump suit: if both five card hands match, the pot is shared.
The higher side card wins. A pair is two cards, so three more are needed to complete the hand: you compare the highest of those three, then the next, then the last. The card that settles it is called the kicker.
It is the card alongside your hand that decides a tie. If you have a pair of eights with an ace and the other player has a pair of eights with a king, you win on the ace. The kicker is not part of the pair, but it is part of your five cards, and that is why it counts.
Compare the higher pair of each hand first. If those match, compare the second pair. If both pairs match, the fifth card decides. Kings and threes beat queens and jacks, because kings sit above queens and the comparison stops right there.
The one that ends higher wins. A straight is five cards in a row, so you only need the top card of each: seven to jack beats six to ten. If both straights end on the same card they are identical and the pot is split.
The highest card inside the flush wins, and if those match you carry on to the second, third and so on to the fifth. The suit of the flush is irrelevant: a club flush and a heart flush are compared only by their cards.
The three of a kind decides first. A full house is three of a kind plus a pair, so you compare the trips and only look at the pair if both trips are the same rank. Three nines with two deuces beats three eights with two aces.
The higher three of a kind wins. If both are the same rank, which only happens when the trips are entirely in the middle, you compare the two cards alongside, highest first and then the other.
Then the board plays and everyone still in the hand has the same hand. The pot is split equally between them. It does not happen often, but it happens, usually when the middle brings a complete straight or flush that nobody improves on.
No. You use the best five of the seven available, wherever they come from. You can win using one of your cards, or none. This is specific to Texas Hold'em: other variants do require a fixed number of your own cards.
Yes, and it is the lowest straight there is. It is the only moment in poker where the ace counts as a low card. What does not work is wrapping around: king, ace, two, three, four is nothing. A straight can start at the ace or end at the ace, but it cannot run through it.
Equally between the players who tied. If a single chip is left over, it goes to whoever sits closest to the button on its left. That last part is a convention rather than a rule of the game, but it is the one used everywhere and it ends the argument.
They can only win the part of the pot that existed when their last chip went in. Whatever the others bet after that goes into a separate pile, and that pile goes to the best hand among the players who paid it. One player can take the main pot while another takes the side pot.
It makes no difference: folding loses the hand at that moment and there is no way back in. Those cards are out even if they were the best at the table, and they are not shown. Which is the reason to look properly before throwing a hand away.
The last player who bet or raised on the final round. If nobody bet on that round and everyone checked, the first player to the left of the button shows first. Anyone who can see they have lost may simply fold instead of showing, and loses the hand without revealing anything.
Odds are you searched for it with four people waiting. When the game is over, what gets rid of these doubts for good is not reading them: it is playing a few hands with something telling you who was winning and why.
A course from zero, no money and no casino.
