Poker Cards and Hands

In an average deck of European playing cards, there are a total of fifty-two cards, not including two to four joker cards, which are usually not used while playing, except in particular games. Among the fifty-two cards, there are four suits: hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs. Each suit has thirteen ranks, from two -also known as deuce- to ten, and Jack, Queen, King, and Ace. The front of a playing card is known as a face, where a card's suit and rank are indicated.

Poker, a family of card games that share hand rankings and betting rules, usually uses five-card hands. In any poker variant, the cards are first washed and then shuffled to ensure randomness and remove any regularity in the card sequence, and then they are dealt to each player. The role of dealer in a casual poker game is usually rotated clockwise among players, with a "dealer" token or buck placed in front of the designated dealer to indicate their role in the game. In casinos and cardrooms, where a house employee is usually employed to deal out the cards, a buck is still rotated among the players, in order to avoid confusion with turn orders. Most poker variants will deal a player a complete hand, but with the family of poker games known as community card poker, players are dealt incomplete hands, and they are to complete their hands with a certain number of cards dealt to the center of the table called "community" cards.

In poker, individual cards are also ranked. The highest ranking card in almost all poker games is the Ace. After the ace, the "royal" cards are ranked as follows: King, Queen, and then Jack as the lowest. Ten is the highest ranking numbered card, and two is the lowest. Most poker games designate the winning hand during a showdown as the highest hand. Some poker games are lowball though; which is to say that the hand considered to be the winning hand is the lowest one instead of the highest. There are also certain poker variants that employ the high-low split. In a high-low split, the pot in a poker game is split between high cards and low cards. In figuring out which among two similar hands might have the best ranking, it usually comes down to the individual card rankings. Otherwise though, in a poker game that designates the highest hand as the winning hand, a straight flush will always win over a full house or a four of a kind, regardless of how many aces they might have.