Poker Hand Rankings
One of the poker basics that you need to learn and keep in mind when you want to learn how to play poker is to get to know the different poker hand rankings. It is crucial to know them in order to be able to win at poker. It may seem difficult at first, but with a little bit of practice it will get easier for you.
I can just hear everyone who has played poker shouting at me for saying that, but I have to say that it is very simply the truth. Sure, when you first read up on, or look through and try to figure out the poker hand rankings for yourself they make sense. But this is only in the beginning.
When I started out with poker I was very pleased with myself after I figured out and understood what all the different hand rankings meant. But then I had to put it aside for a few weeks and when I got back to it, I was certain that I would be playing poker in time flat, seeing as how I had managed to figure out what the various poker hand rankings were.
The glitch came not then even, because it still made sense to me, but when I began to play. Suddenly I was thrust into the middle of a real live poker game, with people on either side of me – so alright, they were animated figures, but at the time they were real enough – and I was waiting to be posted into the Big Blind.
When my turn came up, I was dealt my two cards (I was playing Texas Holdem), and looked in complete bemusement at my cards. I had a pair of cards in my hand and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with them. Did I want to call, or raise or fold? Were the two cards (I can’t remember what they were), enough of a good hand for me to have a chance at getting the pot?
So at this point all the rules about poker hand rankings that I had gone through and learnt weren't useful to me at all. Being in a real game with real players I suddenly was unable to remember which hands were good and which ones weren’t as good. The only one that I truly remembered was that of a Royal Flush, and I know I didn’t have an outside chance of getting one of those!
So back it was to my drawing board to get in some much needed practice in trying to figure out whether a Full House beat a Straight, or whether a Flush was better than Three of Kind! I learned my lesson though.
Instead of glibly believing that I would be able to remember the various poker hand rankings when I began to play, I instead utilized a much underrated method of remembering them: I practiced, day and night whenever I could wherever I could taking a pack of cards along with me so that I would always have something to do.