Check out our detailed guide on rankings razz poker hands for the in-depth information. Rankings hands is razz is not really too hard to do but it does take a little bit of getting used to. As you might already know, the goal in razz is to make the lowest hand possible, which is the most powerful hand in the game if you want to win. Actually, the highest ranking hand is a low-ball straight known as the wheel or just an ace-low straight which consists of the cards A-2-3-4-5.

Remember that flushes and straights don’t count and pairs are bad for the hand as I explained yesterday. One thing to remember is that you still need to keep track of suits on cards if you end up in a tie breaker. If someone both gets an ace as the door card, one way to determine who pays the bring-in is by the suit. Ranking from strongest to weakest suits: Spades, Hearts, Diamonds and Clubs.

Now there are a few other details you should know about ranking hands in razz. If two people have 5 card hands and one has a 7 high and the other has an 8 high, the person with the 7 high hand will win the pot all the time. For example, a hand of 2-4-5-6-7 will out perform a hand of A-2-3-4-8. Your hand is as powerful as the highest card and you want that high card to be low.

Here is another useful example, which hand would win: A-4-6-7-9 or A-4-5-8-9? If you said the first hand, then you are correct. The nines tie up so you have to look at the second lowest card in each hand. The 7 is lower than the 8 so this hand would win no matter what other lower cards were in play as well.

One other thing to note is that if you get a bunch of pairs, three of a kind or four of a kind, players must throw the extra cards away. There may be a situation where players can only make a 4 card hand. All 5 card hands will beat any 4 card hand. All 4 card hands will beat any 3 card hands and so on. This is really about as hard as it gets with the ranking concepts, but check out the article for more details.