Some rules

I'm not going to say how to play the game, because most of that is very boring, and most people know already. For my sake, and also for your sake (possibly), I am going to go over which hands are the best, and some other sometimes forgotten rules in Texas Hold Em.

Someone once asked me "what is the best and the worst hands in poker." I looked at them, and was kind of confused with the question. She wanted to figure out these extremes to have a basis on how good certain cards are, but i knew it wouldn't help. Also, I didn't know how to explain that to her. I told her that a royal flush is the best hand, and a 7 high is the worst hand, but nobody ever gets those two hands. The truth is that the hard thing about knowing which hands are better is kind of complicated. Firstly, there are seven cards out, but one can only use five. This is confusing, because someone might think that they have three pairs, because they do, but three pairs is obviously a six carded hand, and does not fly in poker. Also, there are many different kinds of good poker hands that do not necessarily seem alike. An example is a flush and a pair. The flush is much better than the pair, but a flush doesn't even have one pair inside it.

These problems are often solved with posters, which are bought by many recreational poker players, who like to play, but cannot always remember all the rules. If someone asked me if a full house (a pair and three of a kind) is better or worse than a flush, i would have no idea. I could very easily find out by looking at one of these posters that a full house is better. Also, if in the same situation I forgot what a flush was, I could look at this same poster to figure out that it is five cards of the same suit.

Sometimes two people will get the same hand. This often makes one of the more experienced poker players at the table grow interested. In these situations, sometimes a 'kicker' is used, and sometimes it is not. The whole 'kicker' rule is not on most posters that i have seen, and it is complicated. The kicker is the next highest card that is not in the most important part of the hand. If I had two pair (2s and 4s), and my friend had 2 pair (2s and 4s), and my next highest card is and 8, the 8 would b the kicker. If my friend's next highest card is a jack, since their kicker is higher than mine, they would win. If the kickers are the same value, the pot is split. In some instances, however, kickers are not used. I have found this is true in flushes, when a certain high card is a community card. I have also found, however that a flush will use a kicker. Obviously, different people play with different rules, which brings me to my next topic.

Some people play so that nobody will ever split the pot. To do this, they use the values of suits. This is also very diverse. Some people say hearts are high, and some people say spades are high. Not only are the orders different, but the applied card can also be different. Some people look at the high card's suit(s), and some people look at the kicker's. This is all very personal, and must be explained in detail at the beginning of the game to avoid big arguments in the middle of the game. The way I see it, though, is that having the exact same hand and kicker is not very probable; if it did happen, splitting the deck would be a fine compromise.