Bingolucky

• How To Remember Poker Hands Clip Art
• How To Remember Poker Hands Video
• How To Remember Poker Hands Free
• How To Remember Poker Hands Youtube
• How To Remember Poker Hands Without

The two highest-ranking hands are the straight royal straight flush. Remembering what these are will be fairly easy, as they both draw on previous concepts. A straight flush is just having both at the same time - for example, when five of the same suit are in a consecutive order, such as a.

Texas hold’em is sometimes called a “partial information game” because while the community cards and all betting action is plain for every one to see, each player’s two hole cards are known only to him or her. Knowing what two cards you have have been dealt is the only informational advantage you are guaranteed to have every single hand.

But what if you forget what those two cards are?

Hold’em doesn’t present the challenge to memory that other games do. For instance, in Omaha you’re dealt four cards, which can sometimes be tricky to retain after a single glance. And in seven-card stud being able to remember which up cards were dealt to players who have folded is highly recommended — but also not so easy (for most of us).

But we’re talking about trying to remember just two cards. Surely that shouldn’t be too difficult, should it?

Well, even the best hold’em players sometimes have trouble remembering their hole cards. Even Phil Ivey!

Who Could Forget the Time Ivey Forgot?

Back in 2009, Ivey made a deep run in the World Series of Poker Main Event, reaching the final table and ultimately finishing seventh. Along the way a hand arose with 24 players left that saw Ivey open with a minimum-raise from under the gun with . The table folded around to Jordan Smith in the big blind who reraised with , and Ivey called.

Both players ended up checking all three postflop streets as the board came , then , then . At the showdown, Smith said “ace” and turned over his hand to show he’d made a pair on the river.

However, that same river card gave Ivey a flush, putting a fourth spade on the board to go with the in his hand. But instead of showing his cards and being awarded the pot, Ivey mucked!

Don’t believe me? Take a look:

In the commentary, Norman Chad makes a reference to the “Big Game.” A while back in “Preparing for a Poker Tournament? Follow These Five Steps,” Rich Ryan referred to Ivey’s 2009 WSOP Main Event run and how he was spending every waking hour away from the tournament playing in a high-stakes game at Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio.

“I am barring Phil from the Big Game for 30 days,” cracks Chad, deciding that fatigue was a likely explanation Ivey’s mistake. “Phil, you misread your hand!” he repeats afterward. “How could you misread your hand?!?'

Most of us watching that hand play out on ESPN found it almost heartening to see a top-level player like Ivey show that he sometimes makes mistakes, too. In a clip shown later during the Main Event final table, Ivey spoke about the hand good-naturedly, chuckling at how he’d never looked back at his hand once and had simply forgotten one of his eights was the spade.

“I learned from it,” he adds with a smile. “I look back at my hand now a couple of times, especially before I throw my hand in.”

It’s Okay to Look Back

We can learn as well from Ivey’s mistake, likewise always making it a practice to look back at our cards before mucking them and conceding a pot. Indeed, there’s nothing wrong with looking back at your hand at any point to reconfirm to yourself what you have.

Of course, constantly looking back at your hand could potentially mark you as a “newbie” at the table, something most of us don’t necessarily want to have happen. In some situations doing so can constitute a fairly obvious tell, too.

Very often when a flop brings three of the same suit, or if the turn puts a third card of the same suit on the board (as in the Ivey-Smith hand), players will recheck their cards to remind themselves if they have that suit in their hands. Doing so often signals to the table that you at least have two unsuited cards in your hand, and that you probably weren’t thinking too much about making a flush with your hand until that moment.

Generally speaking, players who have been dealt a suited hand never have to remind themselves what suit their cards are — seeing two hearts or two spades or whatever lodges in the mind pretty stubbornly. But when the hands are unsuited, remembering which two suits you have sometimes doesn’t quite stick.

Remembering Suits

One of my favorite strategy books, Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy by the late Barry Tanenbaum, includes a short discussion about remembering hole cards that includes a mnemonic device for avoiding this “look-back-to-see-what-suits-you-have tell” (as Tanenbaum calls it).

He points out how with unsuited hands you have six possible combinations when it comes to the two suits, and he offers a little memory trick for remembering all six:

• clubs and spades — black
• diamonds and hearts — red
• clubs and diamonds — low (first in alphabetical order)
• hearts and spades — high (last in alphabetical order)
• clubs and hearts — round (tops of the pips)
• diamonds and spades — pointed (tops of the pips)

Remembering that your hand is “all black” or “all red” is simple enough. Looking at one club and one heart and thinking “round” to yourself (referring to the rounded look of the symbols) is not hard either, nor is doing the same with the “pointed” diamonds and spades.

Meanwhile, in other card games in which suits are ranked (not the case in hold’em), the ranking goes from spades (highest) down to hearts, then diamonds, then clubs (lowest). The sequence happens to follow reverse ABC order, thus the earlier in the alphabet, the lower the rank of the suit. That, too, can work as a way to remember you have “low” suits (a club and a diamond) or “high” suits (a heart and a spade).

Remembering Ranks

While suits escape us sometimes, the ranks of our hole cards usually do not as numbers and the face cards stay with us more readily as we look down and see “ace-five” or “queen-eight” or “seven-deuce.”

I’ve seen others pass along all sorts of advice when it comes to remembering ranks, sometimes making reference to all of the many hold’em hand nicknames as part of their recommendations (e.g., is the “Jackson Five,” is the “Dolly Parton,” and so on). Probably not the most practical advice, in truth.

For me, I generally go with a much simpler strategy of thinking to myself what my hand sounds like if I were to say it out loud. That is, I’ll look down at and “say” to myself “queen of clubs, ten of diamonds,” often more than once.

That works for me, and in fact tends to make Tanenbaum’s trick for remembering suits less needful, although his idea does work. Silently “saying” my hand to myself also helps me remember which card is which, suit-wise, which can matter sometimes, too (e.g., when drawing to a flush with , it is obviously relevant to know if you have the ace or the six of the needed suit.) Perhaps this method might work for you — just don’t say your hand out loud!

Of course, when all else fails take Ivey’s advice to himself and do simply look back at your cards. Better to be thought a newbie than to muck the winning hand!

Get all the latest PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+!

• Tags

  cash game strategytournament strategybeginner strategyPhil IveyNorman ChadESPNWorld Series of Poker

• Related Tournaments

  World Series of Poker

• Related Players

  Phil IveyNorman Chad

With few exceptions, all poker games place hands on the same
scale from high- to low-value. Poker hands are ranked depending
on their likelihood. The least-likely hands are the
highest-ranked; the most common hands are the lowest-ranked.
Identical poker hands are ranked by which hands holds cards of
the highest value.

Poker Hand Rank

Here is the standard hand rank, from highest to lowest:

A royal flush is a hand where all the cards are of the same suit and the 5 highest cards in consecutive order (10, J, Q, K, A). This hand is the best hand that you can get in the game of Texas Hold’em.

A straight flush is a hand where all the cards are of the same suit and are in consecutive order. For example, a 23456, all of hearts, is a straight flush. In the event of a tie, the straight flush with the highest card wins.

How To Remember Poker Hands Clip Art

A 4 of a kind is a hand where 4 of the 5 cards are of the same ranking. An example of a hand with a 4 of a kind might have KKKK2. That would be the 2 in every suit–clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades. In the event of a tie, the 4 of a kind with the highest hand ranking wins.

A full house is a hand that consists of 3 cards of one rank and 2 cards of another rank. An example of a full house might look like this: KKKQQ. In the event of a tie, the hand with the higher cards in the 3 cards is the winner.

A flush is a hand that consists of 5 cards of the same suit—clubs, diamonds, hearts, or spades. In the event of a tie, the flush with the highest card is the winner.

How To Remember Poker Hands Video

A straight is a hand where all 5 cards of consecutive ranks. 23456 is an example of a straight. In the event of a tie, the straight with the highest card is the winner.

2 pairs is a hand where you have 2 cards of one rank and 2 cards of another rank along with a final card of another rank. An example of 2 pairs might look like this: AAKK7.In the event of a tie, the hand with the highest pair wins.

1 pair is a hand where you 2 cards of one rank and 3 cards with different ranks. An example of a pair might look like this: JJ278. In the event of a tie, the higher ranked pair wins.

High card means a hand where none of the other hand rankings apply. If no one still in the hand can make a pair or better, the player with the highest card in his hand wins the pot.

Playing a live game of poker requires that you know this
hierarchy. For new players, this may seem a little daunting.
After all, here you have nine pieces of complex information to
remember in precise order.

A Word About Mnemonic Devices

I learned the order of poker hands using a mnemonic. I think
anyone can use this simple method to learn the hierarchy in a
matter of minutes. Mnemonics are popular memory devices used by
students, teachers, and people of all stripes for hundreds of
years in order to remember complex information.

You probably used a mnemonic device to remember the order of
the planets in our solar system. I remember learning the
sentence: “My very excellent mother just served us nine pizzas.”
The first letter of each of the words in that sentence will help
you remember that the planets go in this order – Mercury, Venus,
Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. I’ll
probably never forget that fact, thanks to the mnemonic device I
was taught.

The trouble is, it’s hard to convert hand rankings into
words. Besides that, I don’t think you learn much about poker by
simply memorizing the order of hands. You should use the
opportunity of needing to learn proper hand hierarchy to improve
your understanding of poker strategy.

The tips below will help you understand the proper order of
poker hands better and introduce you to some basic poker
concepts to help you improve your overall game.

Low-Value Poker Hands

How To Remember Poker Hands Free

To remember the order of the four lowest-value hands, just
remember the number series “0, 1, 2, 3.”

• 0 means “high card.” Having nothing in your hand means
  the value of your hand depends on the value of your highest
  card. Remember – in poker, aces rank high, while 2’s rank
  low.
• 1 means “one pair.” Any hand that contains just a single
  pair of cards and nothing else valuable is a 1.
• 2 means “two pair.” This is a hand that contains two
  pairs of cards.
• 3 means “three-of-a-kind.” It’s the most valuable of the
  low-value hands.

High-Value Poker Hands

For the purpose of this post, I’m calling every hand above a
three-of-a-kind a “high-value hand,” but lots of poker
strategists would consider a straight to be a low-value hand.
This is really a difference in philosophy and a language issue
more than anything else.

How To Remember Poker Hands Youtube

For that reason, and for simplicity’s sake, I like to think
of straight as a “/” symbol in my mnemonic. That means our
current mnemonic string goes: “0, 1, 2, 3, /.”

It’s easier to memorize the order of the other high-ranking
hands if you count the number of letters in the hand’s name.
It’s made all the easier to remember by the fact that the number
of letters increases as you move up the scale.

Here’s how I break it down:

• 5 – The word flush contains five letters.
• 9 – The words full house contain nine letters.
• 11 – The words four of a kind contain eleven letters.
• 13 – The words straight flush contain thirteen letters.
• 18 – The words royal straight flush contain eighteen
  letters.

Putting them all together, our mnemonic is: “0 – 1 – 2 – 3 /
5 – 9 – 11 – 13 – 18.”

Other Ways to Memorize Hand Hierarchy

I’m not going to pretend that the method I used to learn hand
hierarchy is the only one that will work. The three ideas below
are the most popular tactics on the Web besides the use of
mnemonics, based on my research. You can use any of the four
methods described on this post to keep track of what hand beats
what other hand. That way, you’ll be able to plan your tactics
ahead of time and make smart bidding decisions.

Rote Memorization

Some people learn best by repeated drilling of the material
to be memorized. I’ve heard of actors reading their scripts over
and over, playing tapes of the script in their sleep, and
learning their lines by rote. I can’t think of any reason why
you shouldn’t try this method.

Hand Evaluation Diagrams

How To Remember Poker Hands Without

Various poker trainer programs and strategy gurus have put
together diagrams to help you analyze your hand. You can use
these in poker rooms, and obviously you can use them online, so
long as you don’t care about the other guys at the table making
fun of you. They’re available for free with a simple Google
search.

Frequent Exposure

The more rounds of poker you play, the more you’ll become
familiar with all the rules, including the rules of hand
ranking. You may lose a bunch on the way there, because of your
lack of familiarity with hand ranks, but, by God, you’ll get it
eventually.

Conclusion

Remember that some poker variations assign different values
to cards and hands. Some games are totally reversed, rewarding
the lowest-value hand instead of the highest-value one. Other
games may consider an Ace to be low, or use Jokers, which throws
off the hierarchy and strategy a bit.

I hope that this page helped you learn about the value of the
cards you’re dealt. I believe the best way to practice your
newfound understanding of hand hierarchy is to get out there and
play a bunch of poker. If you’re still new to the game and not
yet comfortable with your understanding of hand rankings, you
can always play in free-to-play apps or use play-money at your
favorite online poker room.