Poker Hand Precedence

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OBJECTIVE: To become a winner you should make up the highest possible poker hand of five cards, using the two initially dealt cards and the five community cards.

NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 2-10 players

NUMBER OF CARDS: 52- deck cards

Precedence

RANK OF CARDS: A-K-Q-J-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2

THE DEAL: Every player is dealt two cards face down which is commonly called ‘hole cards’.

So the next question that has to be addressed is why multiplication usually has precedence over addition (note that some programming languages, notably, do not follow this convention). It seems to have arisen from a global consensus, mainly over concerns of simplicity of writing polynomials, but wasn't formalised until the 20th century. Online Casino games allow you to play an electronic version of popular casino games such as baccarat, slots, poker, Order Of Precedence Poker Hands blackjack and roulette. Game outcomes for Online Casino games are determined by a Random Number Generator (RNG) contained within Order Of Precedence Poker Hands the game’s software.

TYPE OF GAME: Casino

AUDIENCE: Adults

Introduction to Texas Hold ‘Em

No Limit Texas Hold’em. Sometimes called the cadillac of Poker, Texas Hold ‘em is a fairly easy game to learn but can take years to master.

How to Play

To begin every player gets two pocket cards. A deck of cards is placed in the middle of the table and these are known as community deck and these are the cards that the flop will be dealt from.
Once all players have been dealt their initial two cards players will be asked to place their first bid. Once all players have placed their first bid a second round of bidding occurs.
Once all players have placed their final bids, the dealer will deal the flop. The dealer will flip over the first 3 cards, known as the “flop”, from the community deck. The goal is to make the best 5 card had you can with the three cards from the community deck and the two in your hand.
Once the first three cards have been flipped over, player will have the option to bid again or fold. After all players have had a chance to bid or fold, the dealer will flip over a fourth card known as a “turn” card.
The players still remaining will have the option to once again fold or bid. Now the dealer will flip the 5th and final card over, known as the “river”card.
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Once all five cards have been flipped by the dealer, players will have one last chance to raise the bid or fold. Once all bids and count bids have been made it’s time for the players to reveal their hands and determine a winner.

First Round Betting: The Pre-Flop

When playing Texas hold ‘em a round flat chip or “disk” is used to represent the position of the dealer. This disk is placed in front of the dealer to indicate their status. The person sitting to dealer left is known as the small blind and the person sitting to the left of the small blind is known as the big blind.
When betting, both blinds are required to post a bet before receiving any cards. The big blind is required to post the equivalent or higher of the bet placed by the small blind. Once both blinds have posted their bids two cards are dealt to each player and remaining players can choose to fold, call, or raise. After the end of the game the dealer button is moved to the left so that every player takes on the blind position at some point to maintain the fairness of the game.
Poker hand precedence
Fold – The action of surrendering your cards to the dealer and sitting out the hand. If one folds their cards in the first round of betting, they lose no money.
Call – The action of matching the table bet, which is the most recent bet that has been placed on the table.
Raise – The action of doubling the amount of the most recent bet.
The small and the big blind have the option to fold, call, or raise before the first round of betting ends. If either of them choose to fold, they will lose the blind bet that they initially placed.

Second Round Betting: The Flop

After the first round of betting ends the dealer will proceed to deal the flop. Once the flop has been dealt, players will access the strength of their hands. Again, the player to the left of the dealer is the first to act.
Since there is no compulsory bet on the table, the first player has the option to to take the three previous options discussed, call, fold, raise, as well as the option to check. To check, a player taps his hand twice on the table, this allows the player to pass the option to make the first bet on to the player to his left. All players have the option to check until a bet has been placed on the table. Once a bet has been placed, players must choose to either fold, call, or raise.

Third & Fourth Round Betting: The Turn & The River

After the second round of betting closes, the dealer will deal the fourth card of the flop, known as the turn card. The player to dealer left has the option to check or place a bet. The player that opens the bet closes the bet, after all other players have chosen to fold, raise, or call.
The dealer will then add the bets to the existing pot and deal a fifth card known as “The River”. Once this card has been dealt, the remaining players have the option to check,fold, call, or raise. Lets say all players decide to check. If that is the case it is time for all remaining players to reveal there cards and determine the winner. The player with the highest ranking hand is the winner. They receive the full pot and a new game begins.

Ties

In the chance of a tie between hands the following tie-breakers are used:

Pairs– if two players are tied for highest pairs a “kicker” or the next highest-ranking card is used to determine the winner. You continue until one player has a higher-ranking card or both are determined to have the same exact hand, in which case the pot is split.

Two pairs– in this tie, the higher ranked pair wins, if top pairs are equal in rank you move to the next pair, then move to kickers if necessary.

Three of a kind – higher ranking card takes the pot.

Straights – the straight with the highest-ranking card wins; if both straights are the same the pot is split.

Flush – The flush with the highest-ranking card wins, if the same you move to the next card till a winner is found or hands are the same. If hands are the same split the pot.

Full house – the hand with the higher ranking three cards wins.

Four of a kind – the higher ranking set of four wins.

Poker Hand Precedence

Straight flush – ties are broken the same as a regular straight.

Royal Flush – split the pot.

Hand Ranking

2. Pair – Two of the same the same card (9,9,6,4,7)

Poker Hand Precedence

3. Two pair – Two pairs of the same card (K,K,9,9,J)
4. Three of a kind – Three cards of the same ( 7,7,7,10,2)
6. Flush – Five cards of the same suit
7. Full House – Three card of a kind and a pair (A,A,A,5,5)
9. Straight Flush – Five cards in order all of the same suit (4,5,6,7,8 – same suit)

Poker Hand Order Of Precedence

10. Royal Flush – Five cards in order of the same suit 10- A (10,J,Q,K,A)
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Multi-table no-limit hold'em tournaments differ from cash games in several respects, a key one being the increase in blinds and antes that constantly affect the significance of chips, making stacks 'shallower' (relatively speaking) and forcing players into action. The way most tournaments pay out — with only the top 10 to 15 percent (sometimes more) getting a piece of the prize pool and the biggest cashes up top — also makes tournament poker very different from cash games where every chip has an assigned cash value that never changes.

In other words,in tournaments the value of chips is constantly changing. When a chip stack is described in terms of big blinds, its value changes every time a new level begins. It also is constantly changing relative to everyone else's stack, being either above, below, or right around the 'average' at any given moment.

Your chips also change in their actual cash value every step of the way in a tournament. You pay an buy-in for a starting stack, at which moment every chip is worth the same amount of cash. But as the tournament proceeds through the early, middle, and late stages — nearing the bubble, moving past the bubble into the money, and then on to the final table — every elimination increases the cash value of your chips.

This dynamic creates an interesting tension when it comes to tournament strategy. The goal of the tournament is to win every chip in play, so chip accumulation is obviously an important objective. But you can't have a chance to win every chip if you can't avoid losing your own along the way (unless reentering is an option, but even that only lasts for part of tournament's initial period). Thus is simple survival also an important objective.

In a given hand or even series of hands, the goal of chip accumulation and the goal of survival may seem to be self-contradictory — you can't win chips without risking your own, right? But over the course of a tournament, you have to work toward achieving both objectives in order to succeed.

Let's run through just a few of the tactics associated with each of these objectives — chip accumulation and survival — then talk a little about managing the tension that sometimes comes up between them.

Tournament Tactics: Chip Accumulation

Probably the first tactic many players think of when it comes to accumulating chips in tournaments is stealing blinds and antes, a 'move' that's often worth more in terms of how it affects image than actual chip accumulation during the early stage of a tournament, but can become increasingly important in terms of adding chips during the middle and later stages (when the blinds and antes are larger).

Other tactics like value betting apparent winning hands and bluffing or semi-bluffing with hands that are likely weaker than what opponents hold help players accumulate chips from the very beginning right through to the end of a tournament. Still more tactics emerge later on, such as when the bubble approaches and the bigger stacks start pressuring medium and small stacks more often, getting them to fold stronger and stronger hands in order to avoid the risk of missing the money while adding chips themselves.


All of these tactics represent examples of trying to find risks that are worth taking in order to earn the rewards of more chips. You try to steal blinds and antes to win chips before the flop. You value bet or bluff to try to win them after the flop. You take advantage of players who have tightened up when the bubble nears by grabbing up dead money with your bets and raises. In all cases, you're weighing each risk against its potential reward and hopefully finding spots where you have some edge each time.

Of course, when evaluating whether a risk is worth taking in light of the reward it offers, the stage of the tournament and your specific situation affects everything. Not every risk is equal, even if the particular hand is offering you exactly the same risk-reward decision.

Let's say you've reached the river versus a single opponent who makes a pot-sized bet — e.g., there's 10,000 in the pot, and the player bets 10,000. You hold second pair and estimate there's a 40% chance your hand is best. In fact, let's pretend you know with utter certainty the chance you will win is exactly 40%. You would have to risk 10,000 to earn a reward of 20,000, so the pot odds here are exactly 2-to-1. Should you call?

In a cash game, you'd want to call every time. With more than a 33% chance of winning, getting 2-to-1 pot odds dictates you should call. Call in this spot every time, and you'll ultimately profit.

In a tournament, though, you might not always be able to make this call, even though the pot odds suggest you should. That's because sometimes the chips you might lose are actually worth more than the chips you could win. If you're big-stacked and calling only risks a small percentage of your stack, the risk is probably worthwhile. But if you're short-stacked and the call represents a big percentage of your stack (or all of it), it probably isn't.

Tournament Tactics: Survival

Unless the tournament is played 'winner-take-all' — really only the case in short-handed sit-n-gos such as are often encountered when playing poker online, one-table satellites, or other special events — merely surviving to make it past the money bubble bursting will translate into a profit for the tournament player. The fact that 10 or 15 (or more) percent of the field gets paid alone should tell you that chip accumulation isn't everything in tournament poker — even though you want to accumulate all the chips, you don't really have to do so in order to profit.

Most of us probably associate 'survival' in tournament poker with folding — that is, with avoiding risks, shunning potential (temporary) rewards, and doing what we can to keep our seat and avoid being in a position to bust.

That said, folding hands itself can be risky. For example, if there are still two dozen eliminations to the money and a player has slipped down to just a few big blinds, there may not be enough time left to 'fold into the money.' Folding might help you avoid risk in a given hand, but it can also (potentially) be a way to increase your risk of not lasting long enough to cash.

We can extend the idea of 'survival' tactics into other areas of tournament poker as well, and in fact could cite some of those same tactics used to accumulate chips as also serving the cause of survival.

Poker Hand Precedence

A successful steal of the blinds and antes ensures you can fold through the next full orbit without a loss of chips. A value bet that gets paid off or a bluff that earns a fold provides a kind of 'insurance' against the next time when those tactics fail you. Applying pressure with your big stack while on the bubble nets you additional chips that then enable you to survive deeper into the money once the cashouts begin.

We could also turn these tactics around and list defending your blinds against steals (or choosing not to) as part of surviving tournaments, as well as making correct folds against others' value bets, picking off others' bluffs with correct calls, and responding effectively to big stacks' bubble pressure.

Understanding poker strategy for playing a short stack is often crucial to surviving poker tournaments. Not everyone accumulates chips early and in fact most of us will spend significant periods in tournaments with below average chips. Knowing starting hand values, the importance of position and how pushing first (rather than calling all in) can give you added fold equity, and other specifics of short-stacked strategy can be especially important during the middle and late stages of tournaments.

Once in the money,the concept of 'laddering' sometimes also comes into play for a shorter-stacked player looking to wait out others' eliminations and ascend another 'rung' on the payouts. Some players are especially adept at avoiding risk and quietly persisting with below average chips into the higher payouts.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to weighing chip accumulation versus survival in multi-table tournaments, no player gets to choose one approach over the other to pursue exclusively.

A player who is loose and plays many hands aggressively isn't merely a chip accumulator, nor is a tight player who is very selective about getting involved only interested in survival. Tournaments demand players both accumulate chips and do what they can to survive, although it is crucial to recognize how circumstances change which way a player might 'lean' when it comes to strategic priorities.

A good rule of thumb to remember is that during early stages chip accumulation tends to take precedence, while survival becomes more important during the middle and later stages when nearing and then reaching the money. That's obviously not to say you aren't also still trying to survive early and accumulate chips late, but the emphasis changes as the tournament progresses.

Keep in mind how that very last chip in your stack is always the most valuable one to you — it's the one keeping you in the tournament. The closer you get to risking it, the higher your chances are of busting, and so sometimes the chips you accumulate aren't worth as much as the ones you lose that get your stack down closer to that last chip.

Precedence

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