For anyone out there who may be just getting started learning how to play online poker, knowing all about poker hands is the crucial first step. The entire game of online poker revolves around the idea of checking poker hand rankings to determine who takes the pot!
So if you ever hope to get anywhere with online poker, or even if you’re just looking to have fun – knowing all understanding poker hands is your first goal in the road to online poker mastery!
In fact, knowing poker hand rankings is just another begging, since to achieve true mastery you will have to learn poker hand rankings very intimately. The best players can read the table for hundreds of possible poker hand ranking combinations in a twentieth of a heart beat!
Sorting out poker hands is a fundamental skill in online poker. If you hope to refine your online poker strategy, you have to focus on learning all 10 poker hand rankings by heart, as well as being able to check possible combinations out on the table in a tenth of a blink.
Start improving your online poker skills today! Read through this article for a bit of advice on how to get faster at checking poker hands, as well as a quick reference of the actual 10 poker hand rankings in the game.
Check this reference for a quick overview of the 10 poker hand rankings (sorted from high to low) you have to know to enjoy playing online poker
- Royal Flush: The strongest possible hand, comprised of an ordered sequence of five suited cards leading all the way up to an A.
- Straight Flush: Similar to the above, except here the five-cared suited sequence ends with something weaker than an A.
- Four of a Kind (Poker): a group of any four equal cards.
- Full House: three equal cards plus a pair.
- Flush: five unordered cards of the same suit.
- Straight: a sequence of five cards of different suits
- Three of a Kind: Three equal cards
- Two pairs
- One pair
- Highest card (If no player has a sequence, the pot goes to the player holding the highest pocket card of all – or split in case of a tie).
Knowing about poker hands is just the beginning … to be an online poker master, you have to learn poker hand rankings by heart!
If you hope to become really good at playing poker, memorizing the 10 sequences listed above is a crucial first step!
The entire game of poker revolves around checking possible hand combinations and making bets around that, so you absolutely have to learn these to start playing. You’ll find the more you play actual games of poker, the faster you’ll get at checking for possible hand combinations instantly by glancing at the turned and dealt cards.
If you put additional time and effort to improve your fluidity in looking for possible hand combinations, your efforts will likely pay dividends! So take your time to really learn about the actual hand rankings, as well as the associated probabilities, because this kind of training will help you be a much stronger player.
Further ideas to improve your online poker strategy by getting faster at reading poker hand rankings.
In poker as in life, there are no secrets to being really good and fast at any skill.
There is only one undeniable fact: the more time and effort your put into practicing any possible skill in body and mind, the better, faster and stronger you’ll be in that skill.
So if you really are determined to do more than just learn about poker hands – if you want to really put the time and effort to walk the road to poker mastery – you simply have to play poker. The more games you play, the better you’ll be at playing the game. To that effect, you should simply get interested in the poker in theory and practice, and play it with actual physical people as well as through the Internet.
In fact, here’s an idea you may want to consider to help you hasten your level grinding in poker: consider playing around with offline poker games every now and then. While it’s really not the same thing as playing with actual humans, those offline games are amazing for practicing when you’re a beginner player, since the AI-driven nature of the games makes the games go by very fast since there are no waiting times involved from the computer players.
This kind of unnatural game flow available from offline texas hold’em poker (played against computer players) will feel very unpleasant when you’re a real poker player – but as a beginner who needs to go through as many games as possible as fast as possible to improve the basic skills, it’s a perfect option! Try it! We should write some articles about this idea, in fact – and provide you dear readers with the best available offline poker alternatives as well as the best reasons to use offline poker for practice!