All the suits in poker are of equal value. It makes no difference whether someone has the ace of clubs or the ace of diamonds. If remaining players have exactly the same hand at showdown, only in different suits, the pot is split.
An ace is the highest ranking card in Texas Hold'em and can be played either high or low. This means that if you are dealt an ace preflop, there is a fair chance that you hold one of the strongest hands at the table. If you are all-in with an opponent and they do not have a pocket pair or a better ace, you are the favorite to win the hand. Under high rules, an ace can rank either high (as in A♥ K♥ Q♥ J♥ 10♥, an ace-high straight flush) or low (as in 5♦ 4♦ 3♦ 2♦ A♦, a five-high straight flush), but cannot simultaneously rank both high and low (so Q♣ K♣ A♣ 2♣ 3♣ is an ace-high flush). A straight is five consecutive card ranks. Aces can be high or low so the lowest straight is ace through five while the highest is ten through ace. There are no kickers with straights since all five cards are needed to make the hand. Flush: A flush beats a straight. When an Ace is part of a wheel straight A-2-3-4-5, it’s a 5-high straight instead of an Ace-high straight, simply because the Ace is being used as a lowest card of the straight in this instance. Common Aces in Poker Variants Granted, most of you reading this will likely be geared to play No-Limit Texas Hold’em.
Hand Ranking
The value of poker hands is determined by how rare or common it is to be dealt them, with the most common hands valued lower than the rarer hands. The complete list of poker hands is as follows, in increasing order of scarcity:
- High card
- One pair
- Two pair
- Three of a kind (sometimes called “trips” or “a set”)
- Straight
- Flush
- Full house
- Four of a kind (sometimes called “quads”)
- Straight flush
High Card
If you have no pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, etc., then the highest card in your hand is considered to be decisive. The hand above, in which the best card is a king and there is no other combination of poker hand, is known as “king high”.
Ace high beats king high. King high beats queen high, and so on.
If the high cards in two players’ hands is the same, the second-highest card becomes decisive. If these cards are also the same, the third-highest card plays and so on. These cards are known as the kicker.
High card ace, king kicker:
Player 1 has A♠K♣
Player 2 has A♦Q♦
The board is 9♠6♥4♥3♠2♣
Ace Low Straight Texas Holdem Rules
Both players have an ace, but Player 1 wins, because he has a king as his second highest card (kicker). His opponent only has a queen.