Legendary Player's Talk: Ranks in Poker
Doyle Brunson, one of the legendary poker players, was so into poker that he decided to call on his fellow players for a little game in the terrace of his house. To prepare for the game, he bought three decks of cards branded KEM, Bicycle and Bee cards, fixed his poker table and looked for his poker chips. When all these were ready, he called on five other players namely, David Chip Reese, T.J. Cloutier, Dewey Tomko, and Jim Bechtel. All these players including Doyle Brunson had World Series of Poker gold bracelets. This sounds like a good poker game is up ahead.
Suddenly, when they were starting to play, a curious kid passed by and asked what they are going to play. Doyle Brunson answered that they are playing poker. He added that poker any player who gets the highest-ranking poker hand at showdown wins the game. The curious kid asked many other questions that Doyle Brunson began telling the kid about the rank of poker hands.
The royal flush is the highest hand followed by a straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind. These are followed by two pairs, one pair and ending with a high card.
Doyle Brunson continued that to have a four of a kind poker hand, one must hold four cards of the same denomination plus any odd card. An example of a four of a kind is having jack of hearts, jack of spades, jack of diamonds, jack of clubs and a five of hearts.
'What is this odd card?' the kid asked. Doyle Brunson answered that odd card could be any card and it does not affect the rank of hand, just to complete the five-card hand in poker. And so if one has four aces and a duece, what is important is that one has an ace four of a kind. This hand is sure to beat a jack four of a kind with a king as the odd card. One with higher four of a kind wins the pot in case of a tie. With that the issue on four of a kind rank was settled.
Doyle Brunson repeated the ranks again from full house down to single high card rank to clear things up. There were no more questions asked so Doyle Brunson was confident the kid knew how to play poker. When the kid moved away, that was when they started playing.