Poker card values: which card is highest and is the ace high or low

Players who come to poker from blackjack, rummy or a family trick-taking game often bring a different way of counting cards with them: the ace is worth 11, face cards are worth 10, trumps beat everything else. None of that applies in poker. Here cards are not worth points, they have rank: a fixed order that tells you which hand is stronger and, when two players hold the same hand, who takes the pot. In this guide we go through the card order in poker one card at a time, the double role of the ace, why suits do not count (and the few situations where they do), how kickers settle a tie, what happens to card values in lowball games and with jokers, and what the face cards are called in other languages. People searching for poker card rankings often mean the ten hands; the full hand ranking is explained in depth in our guide to poker hands, while here we focus on the individual cards.

Card order in poker, from 2 to ace

A poker deck has 52 cards split into four suits of 13. Each suit has thirteen ranks, and this is the order that applies in every classic variant (Texas Hold'em, Omaha, Stud, five-card draw):

The 2 (which almost everyone at the table calls the deuce) is the lowest card and the ace is the highest. In between, the number cards follow their natural order, and above the 10 come the three face cards: jack, queen and king. What can be confusing at first is that face cards are not worth "more points", they simply sit higher on the scale. A king is not worth 13 or 10: it is worth "more than a queen and less than an ace".

Because there are four cards of each rank, a five-card hand can never contain more than four of a kind unless you play with jokers, which we cover further down. Those 13 ranks in 4 suits produce the 2,598,960 different five-card hands you can be dealt; and since suits do not count when comparing hands, there are really only 7,462 distinct hand strengths.

52 cards + 2 jokers (the jokers are not used in standard poker)

If you are curious about where this structure of four suits and thirteen ranks comes from, we tell the story in the history of the poker deck.

Is the ace high or low in poker? Both, but never at once

The ace is the only card with two faces. In almost every situation it is the highest card in the deck: a pair of aces beats a pair of kings, and an "ace-high" hand beats a "king-high" hand. But in a straight it can drop down and play as a 1, just below the 2. What it cannot do is both at the same time.

The highest and lowest straight

With the ace on top you get the highest possible straight, A-K-Q-J-10, known at the table as Broadway. With the ace at the bottom you get the lowest, A-2-3-4-5, called the wheel (wheel straight) and also the bicycle or baby straight. In that straight the ace counts as 1, so the top card is the 5: the wheel is a "five-high" straight and loses to any other.

A situation that causes arguments at many home games: if one player has the wheel (A-2-3-4-5) and another has 2-3-4-5-6, the second player wins. Their straight ends at the 6 and the wheel ends at the 5. Holding an ace does not help here, because in that straight the ace is playing as a low card.

Why Q-K-A-2-3 is not a straight

In standard poker, straights do not "wrap around". The ace can sit at the start or the end of a straight, but never in the middle linking the king to the 2. So combinations like Q-K-A-2-3, K-A-2-3-4 or J-Q-K-A-2 are not straights: they are a hand with nothing, where only the high card counts. The same applies to straight flushes. Some home games allow round-the-corner straights, but that is a house rule to agree on before the deal; in a casino or a tournament it does not exist.

This hand is not a straight. It reads as "ace high" with king, queen, 3 and 2 as side cards.

The ace in other variants

• Ace-to-five lowball (Razz, the low half of Omaha Hi-Lo and Stud Hi-Lo): the ace is always the lowest card. It is the best card you can hold.
• Deuce-to-seven: the ace is always high. If you are trying to make the lowest hand, an ace is close to the worst card you can catch.
• Short deck (36-card Hold'em, without the 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s): the ace can still play low, but it now sits below the 6, and the lowest straight is A-6-7-8-9.

Poker suit ranking: suits have no value

This is probably the most common question about poker card values. In standard poker no suit outranks another. The ace of spades is not worth more than the ace of hearts, and a spade flush does not beat a club flush of the same height. If two players have the same hand in different suits, they tie and split the pot. Robert Ciaffone's rulebook (Robert's Rules of Poker, the most widely copied reference among card rooms) puts it plainly: suits never break a tie for a pot.

Suits only matter for making hands that need five cards of the same suit: the flush, the straight flush and the royal flush. If you want to know where spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs come from, we explain it in our article on poker deck suits.

When a suit order is used

The fact that suits do not count for winning a pot does not mean they are never used. Card rooms sometimes need to break a tie between two cards of the same rank when only one person can be chosen, and for that they use what is known as bridge order, which from highest to lowest is:

Spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs. Read from lowest to highest, it matches the alphabetical order of the English names (clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades), which is the easiest way to remember it. These are the cases where it applies:

A Stud example: on the first round you can see one player's 2♦, another's 2♣ and a third player's 9♠. The two deuces are the lowest cards, and of those the club is the lower suit, so the player with the 2♣ posts the forced bet.

In button games (Hold'em, Omaha) the odd chip does not go by suit, but to the first winning player to the left of the button. In any case, the suit only decides that one leftover chip; the pot is still split evenly.

Other suit orders you may come across

Bridge order is the one used in North American card rooms and in most rulebooks written in English, but it is not universal. Home games in different countries use other orders when players agree to break ties by suit. In Italy, for example, the traditional order is hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades (highest to lowest), remembered with the phrase Come Quando Fuori Piove ("like when it rains outside"): the initials of cuori, quadri, fiori, picche. Austria and Sweden are cited as using hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs, and Germany clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds. If someone at a home game suggests breaking ties by suit, the only sensible rule is to make clear which order you are using before you start.

How cards break a tie: high card and kickers

This is where the value of each card really shows. When two players have the same hand (two pairs of kings, for example), the player with the higher side cards wins. Those cards, which are not part of the hand itself but count for breaking ties, are called kickers. Three principles explain almost everything:

1. Only five cards count. Even though you have seven cards available in Hold'em, your hand is the best five. The sixth and seventh cards never break a tie.
2. First you compare the hand, then the kickers, from highest to lowest. If the first card ties, you look at the second, then the third, and so on until one is higher.
3. If all five cards have the same ranks, it is a tie. Suit does not come into it.

Example 1: same pair, the kicker wins

In Texas Hold'em, the board shows K♠ 9♦ 7♣ 4♥ 2♠. Anna holds A♥ K♦ and Luke holds K♣ Q♠. Both have a pair of kings. Anna's hand is K-K-A-9-7 and Luke's is K-K-Q-9-7. The kickers are compared from highest to lowest and the first one already decides it: Anna's ace beats Luke's queen.

Example 2: the kicker that does not play

Now the board is A♠ A♦ K♣ Q♥ J♠. Anna holds 8♦ 3♣ and Luke holds 7♣ 2♦. Anna has the higher 8, but it does not help her: the best five-card hand for both players is the board, A-A-K-Q-J, and their own cards are left out. It is a tie and the pot is split. This is the classic case where someone shows a "higher" kicker and gets a surprise.

If instead the fifth board card were a 4 rather than the jack, Anna's hand would be A-A-K-Q-8 and Luke's A-A-K-Q-7: now the 8 does play and Anna wins.

Example 3: two flushes, card by card

Anna has a heart flush A-J-9-6-3 and Luke a club flush A-J-8-7-5. The aces tie, the jacks tie, and on the third card Anna's 9 beats Luke's 8. It does not matter that Luke's 7 and 5 are higher than Anna's 6 and 3: the comparison stops at the first card that differs.

Example 4: high card against high card

Neither player has made anything. Anna has K-Q-8-5-3 and Luke K-Q-7-6-4. King against king, queen against queen, and Anna's 8 decides it against Luke's 7. That is why, when there is no hand, people say "king high" or "ace high" as shorthand, but the real tiebreak can go all the way to the fifth card.

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The 10 poker hands at a glance

Card values decide things within each hand, but the type of hand comes first: any full house beats any flush, however low the full house. This is the summary ranking, from the highest hand to the lowest. If you want the odds for each one and every tiebreak case, they are in our guide to poker hand rankings.

Card values in lowball poker

In some variants the lowest hand wins, not the highest. These include Razz, Lowball (low-hand draw poker), 2-7 Triple Draw and the low half of Omaha Hi-Lo and Stud Hi-Lo. In all of them the cards still have an order, but what you are aiming for changes and, above all, so does the role of the ace and of straights and flushes. There are three systems, and it is worth keeping them apart. If you want to see how each of these variants is played, we cover them in poker variants.

Ace-to-five: the ace is the lowest card

This is the most widespread system. The ace always counts as 1, straights and flushes do not count (they neither help nor hurt) and the best possible hand is the wheel, 5-4-3-2-A. It is used in Razz, California Lowball and the low half of Hi-Lo games. Pairs do hurt: any hand without a pair beats any hand with one.

Deuce-to-seven: the ace is high and straights count

This is the system for Kansas City Lowball and 2-7 Triple Draw. Here cards rank as in regular poker: the ace is always high and straights and flushes count against you. The best hand is 7-5-4-3-2 in at least two different suits (if they were all the same suit, it would be a flush). A curious detail: A-2-3-4-5 is not a straight in this system, it is simply an "ace-high" hand, and a fairly poor one for low. And a pair of aces is the highest pair, so it loses to any other pair.

Ace-to-six: a mix of the two

Less common, it is played mainly in home games. The ace is low, as in ace-to-five, but straights and flushes count against you, as in deuce-to-seven. That is why the best hand is 6-4-3-2-A: the wheel no longer works because it is a straight.

How two low hands are compared

It works like high-hand poker, but in reverse: you look first at the highest card in each hand and the one with the lower card wins. If they tie, you move on to the second-highest card, and so on. That is why low hands are named from the top: an "eight-six" is a hand whose highest card is an 8 and the next one a 6.

• 8-5-4-3-2 beats 9-7-6-4-3, because 8 is lower than 9 (however low the other cards are).
• 8-6-4-3-2 beats 8-7-3-2-A: the 8s tie and the 6 is lower than the 7.
• In ace-to-five, 7-6-5-4-3 is a "seven" hand, valid for low even though it makes a straight. In deuce-to-seven that same hand is a straight and one of the worst.

The "8 or better" rule in Omaha Hi-Lo

In Hi-Lo games the pot is split between the best high hand and the best low hand, but to compete for the low half you have to qualify: five cards of different ranks, none higher than an 8. That is what "8 or better" means. If nobody qualifies, the best high hand takes the whole pot. In Omaha you must also use exactly two of your four hole cards and three from the board, for both the high hand and the low hand. As in ace-to-five, the ace counts as a low card and straights and flushes do not spoil the low, so A-2-3-4-5 can win the low half outright (it is the best low) and also compete for the high half as a straight.

Jokers and wild cards

Tournament and casino poker does not use jokers: the deck comes with two, but they are set aside before play. In home games and some classic variants they do appear, and they change card values in important ways. There are two very different ways to use them.

The fully wild joker

A wild card (wild) can stand for any card. It can be the joker or an agreed card: the best-known case is deuces wild, very popular in video poker. With wild cards a hand appears that does not exist in regular poker, five of a kind (five aces being the top one), which ranks above the royal flush. The usual rule is that a wild card cannot become a card you already hold, so a "flush with two aces of spades" does not count unless agreed otherwise.

The "bug": a half-wild joker

High draw poker in North American card rooms used (and in some places still uses) a 53-card deck with a joker that is not fully wild. It is known as the bug. It can only play as an ace or to complete a straight, a flush or a straight flush. Some consequences:

• Four aces plus the joker is the best possible hand: five aces. It is the only five of a kind you can make.
• 6-6-6-6 with the joker is not five sixes: it is four sixes with an ace kicker.
• 8-8-5-5 with the joker is not a full house: it is two pair with an ace kicker.
• If the joker completes a flush, it counts as the highest card of that suit that you do not already hold.

The joker in low games

In ace-to-five Lowball the joker becomes the lowest card you do not already hold. With 2-3-5-7 and the joker, it plays as an ace and the hand becomes 7-5-3-2-A.

Face card names and indices

Indices are the small letters or numbers in the corners that let you identify a card without fanning your hand all the way open. On the poker decks used in the US, the UK and almost everywhere else, the indices are the English ones: A (ace), K (king), Q (queen) and J (jack). Spanish players read those same letters as as, rey, reina and jota; the word "jota" itself comes from the Spanish name of the letter J. In other countries, especially on older decks or ones made for local games, the letters follow the local language.

Whatever the letter, the value is the same: a French "D" is a queen and a German "B" is a jack. So if you get hold of a French or German poker deck, you can play with it without any trouble once you know how to read the corners.

From "Kn" to "J"

In English the jack was traditionally called the knave (a servant or page). Corner indices appeared in the United States in the 1860s: Cyrus Saladee's patent dates from 1864, and that same year the Philadelphia printer Samuel Hart issued a deck that had them. In the following decades several manufacturers launched their own systems, and on some decks from that period the jack carried "Kn" in the corner, right next to the king's K. Over time the name jack and its J, which cannot be mistaken for a K, won out, and today it is the international standard.

The names of the French face cards

A curiosity that many people attribute to all decks, but which is only true of the French pattern (the so-called Paris pattern): on those cards each face card has the name of a historical, biblical or legendary figure printed on it. The face cards of the international deck, the one on the poker decks we use today, descend from a different French pattern (the Rouen pattern) by way of England; they never carried names and do not represent anyone in particular.

A card being named David does not mean it is a portrait of King David: the names were fixed by tradition and the designs were copied and simplified over centuries. Sources disagree on the jack of clubs, which is why we give the two names that appear most often. None of this affects the game: in poker a king of spades is worth exactly the same as a king of diamonds.

Do not mix them up: card values in other games

Many people search for "card values" with poker in mind when they are really thinking of the rules of another game. The underlying difference is that in poker cards are compared, while in other games they are added up.

In blackjack the ace is worth 1 or 11, whichever suits the hand, and all face cards are worth 10; it is explained in detail in our blackjack rules. In baccarat the 10 and the face cards are worth nothing and only the last digit of the total counts (a 7 and a 6 make 13, which is a 3). And in Spanish-deck games such as brisca (a trick-taking game) or tute, the ace and the three score the most points, something with no equivalent at all in poker.

What about poker with a Spanish deck?

Poker is played with the 52-card French-suited deck. In Spain, as elsewhere, that deck is used precisely for games of foreign origin such as poker or bridge, while the Spanish deck is kept for mus, tute or brisca. The Spanish deck does not suit poker well: it has 40 or 48 cards, its face cards are the sota (jack), caballo (knight) and rey (king) instead of jack, queen and king, and the 40-card version has no 8s or 9s, which breaks up straights. If that other world interests you, we cover it in our guide to the Spanish deck.

What Spain does have is poker dice, played with five special dice whose faces show ace, K, Q, J, 10 and 9: the six highest poker cards. Hands range from five of a kind (the best) down to a hand with nothing, by way of four of a kind, full house, straight, three of a kind, two pair and one pair. Since dice have no suits, there are no flushes. There are only two possible straights, the high one (10-J-Q-K-A) and the low one (9-10-J-Q-K), and how they are treated varies a lot from place to place, so it is worth agreeing on it before the first roll.

And a note on vocabulary: in Spanish, "póker" is both the name of the game and the name of the hand with four equal cards, which in English is called four of a kind or quads. If you get lost in table slang, our poker glossary covers all of it.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the highest card in poker?

The ace. It ranks above the king, which in turn ranks above the queen and the jack. The only exception is the straight A-2-3-4-5, where the ace plays as the lowest card.

Which is higher, the ace or the king?

The ace. A pair of aces beats a pair of kings, and with the same hand an ace kicker beats a king kicker. Only in the wheel (A-2-3-4-5) and in ace-to-five lowball does the ace become the lowest card.

Does suit matter in poker? Is there a highest suit?

No. In standard poker all four suits are equal and two identical hands in different suits tie. The order spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs is only used for procedural matters, such as drawing for the button or deciding who posts the forced bet in Stud.

Is ace high or low in poker? Can it be a 1?

Yes, but only to make the lowest straight, A-2-3-4-5, which counts as a five-high straight. It cannot be used in the middle of a straight: Q-K-A-2-3 is not a straight.

What is a kicker in poker?

It is a card that is not part of your hand but serves to break a tie with another player who has the same hand. With a pair of kings against a pair of kings, the player with the higher side card wins. Only the five cards of the final hand count.

What is the joker worth in poker?

Standard poker does not use it. In home games it can be fully wild (any card) or, in some classic variants, count only as an ace or to complete straights and flushes. With a joker, five aces is the best possible hand.

What are poker card rankings?

The phrase usually refers to the order of hands, from the royal flush down to high card. Within each hand, card values decide: three kings beat three queens. The full ranking, with odds, is in our guide to poker hands.

Knowing how to read the value of each card is what lets you play without having to ask who won at every showdown. If you are setting up games at home or looking for a deck with easy-to-read indices for the table, our shop has a selection of poker decks, and in the complete guide to the poker deck we explain how to choose between brands, finishes and sizes.

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Keep exploring

• Poker hands: the full hand ranking and odds
• How to play Texas Hold'em poker step by step
• Poker variants: Omaha, Stud, Razz and the rest
• Poker deck suits: origin and meaning
• Card games you can play with a poker deck
• How to Shuffle Cards
• Belote rules

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