---
title: "Hand rankings and the order of the showdown"
url: https://pokernewsstrategy.com/rules-and-formats/hand-rankings-and-showdown-order/
description: "The ranking of hands follows directly from how rare each one is, and the order in which cards are shown at the end follows from who bet last."
published: 2026-08-19
updated: 2026-08-19
author: "Poker News Strategy"
---

# Hand rankings and the order of the showdown

By Poker News Strategy · Published 2026-08-19

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Rules & Formats

The ranking of hands follows directly from how rare each one is, and the order in which cards are shown at the end follows from who bet last.

By Poker News StrategyFiled under Rules & Formatspokernewsstrategy.com/rules-and-formats/hand-rankings-and-showdown-order/

The order of poker hands is not a convention agreed on for convenience. It follows from counting. Out of the two and a half million or so distinct five-card hands that a fifty-two card deck can produce, straight flushes are the rarest and unpaired high-card hands are the most common, and every category in between sits exactly where its frequency puts it. A player who understands that the ranking is a frequency table rather than a list to memorise will rarely misremember it.

## Reading the table

The ranking of five-card poker hands, strongest first.

| Rank | Hand | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Straight flush | Five cards in sequence, all of one suit. The highest, ace through ten, is the royal flush. |
| 2 | Four of a kind | All four cards of one rank, with any fifth card. |
| 3 | Full house | Three cards of one rank with two of another. |
| 4 | Flush | Five cards of one suit, not in sequence. |
| 5 | Straight | Five cards in sequence of mixed suits. The ace may sit above the king or below the two. |
| 6 | Three of a kind | Three cards of one rank with two unmatched cards. |
| 7 | Two pair | Two cards of one rank, two of another, and one unmatched card. |
| 8 | One pair | Two cards of one rank with three unmatched cards. |
| 9 | High card | No pair, no straight and no flush; the highest card decides. |

Two hands in the same category are separated by rank and then by the remaining cards, highest first. Two flushes are compared by their highest card, then the next, and so on down. Two full houses are compared by the three matching cards first. Two pairs are compared by the higher pair, then the lower, then the single unmatched card. When every one of the five cards matches in rank, the hands tie and the pot is divided, regardless of suit: no suit outranks another in the ranking itself.

In community-card games the hand is always the best five cards available, and both, one or neither of a player's own two cards may be used. A player whose two cards contribute nothing plays the five community cards themselves, which is why a strong board can produce a divided pot between players holding entirely different hands.

## The order at showdown

When the last betting round is complete and more than one player remains, the cards are revealed in a fixed order. The player whose bet or raise was the last aggressive action shows first. If the final round passed with no bet at all, the first player still in the hand, counting clockwise from the dealer button, shows first, and the rest follow in the same direction.

A player who is beaten by the hand already shown may concede without revealing their cards. The order exists so that no player can gain by waiting to see everything before deciding whether to show, and knowing it removes the most common source of confusion at the end of a hand.

## How the common formats differ

The formats separate on three questions: how many cards each player holds privately, how many are shared, and how the pot is awarded. In the most widely played community-card game each player holds two private cards and five are shared. In its four-card variant each player holds four and must use exactly two of them, which raises the strength of the typical winning hand considerably. In the seven-card stud family there are no shared cards at all, and part of each player's hand is dealt face up as the betting proceeds. Split-pot variants add a second, low-hand ranking and award half the pot to it, which changes which starting hands are worth playing more than any other single rule.

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