Poker Hands – Ranking. Every poker player knows that the Royal Flush is the strongest poker hand, but where do all of the other poker winning hands rank? Here is a comprehensive list of poker hands in order from highest to lowest ranking. Charts ranking the 169 different starting hands in Texas hold'em can be very intriguing, but it's important to remember they are of limited value. Each hand has a rank, which is compared against the ranks of other hands participating in the showdown to decide who wins the pot. In high games, like Texas hold 'em and seven-card stud, the highest-ranking hands win. In low games, like razz, the lowest-ranking hands win.

In the section titled Hand Rankings in Part One of their book Hold Em Poker For Advanced Players, David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth present a set of groups for the starting hands, i.e. the hole or pocket cards dealt the player by the dealer. To quote:

The reason for this is that most of the hands in each grouping can be played roughly the same before the flop in many, but not all, situations.

Furthermore:

These rankings reflect not only which group each starting hand belongs to, but its approximate order in that group as well. In reality, it’s usually only necessary to know in which group a starting hand belongs.

And, finally:

If you are new to hold ’em we feel it is very important to memorize these groupings. There is no way around this, and the tables make the task much easier. Once the tables are memorized, this system will facilitate applying many of the concepts that follow.

As it turns out, I memorized the grouping lists and not the tables that follow them, and the reason why I delayed starting this blog was that it took me from mid-January till last Friday 10th April to complete the task of memorization. If I am entirely honest, I did not have confidence that I would be up to the task, and I wanted to take it step by step, and ensure I had committed each group to memory before moving on to the next group.

Rank Of Texas Holdem Starting Hands

Rank Of Texas Hold'em Poker Hands

To further quote them:

The rankings are as follows, with an “s” indicating suited and an “x” indicating a small card. Note that a 10 is represented as “T.” Also, if no “s” appears, then the hand is not suited. (These notations will be used throughout this book.)

I replicate the groups and ranks here, as I have committed them to memory. Believe it or not!

How did I memorize this list? I did this through rote memorization, before I discovered the memory palace, but with the added twist of using the Phonetic Alphabet to help commit the groups to memory. So, for example, I memorized Group 1, by reciting the hands as follow:

Group 1: Alfa-Alfa, Kilo-Kilo, Quebec-Quebec, Juliett-Juliett, Alfa-Kilo-Sierra

and finally, as another example, I memorized Group 4, by reciting the hands as follows:

Rank Of Texas Holdem Hands

Group 4: Tango-Nine-Sierra, Kilo-Quebec, Eight-Eight, Quebec-Tango-Sierra, Nine-Eight-Sierra, Juliett-Nine-Sierra, Alfa-Juliett, Kilo-Tango-Sierra.

So, if you memorize the phonetic alphabet, it becomes easier to memorize the lists as they appear in the text.

Texas Holdem Rank Of Hands Poster

Observe that you are memorizing 5+5+6+8+11+10+12+15=72 useful hands, grouped by ranking. Now, there are 13×13=169 card combinations, and 1,326 combinations if you consider all suits as separately counted.