Handling the poker hand rank is elementary to always keep in mind the hierarchy of card combinations that you can form in your projects. You have to squeeze all the possibilities of your hand. With a little luck and a lot of skill, you will be able to tie a good hand that will give you the victory in the game.
After the Straight Flush, the best poker hand after the Royal Flush, poker is the best hand you can form. It would be third on the list of the most powerful hands in poker. This hand is formed when four matching cards of different suits are combined. For example: Kª K♣ K♥ K♦ 7♣. This is a poker hand.
What do 4 of the same cards mean in poker?
By binding four of the same cards of different suits you create the third most powerful poker hand. But you have to correctly assess the importance of the cards. Any four of a kind other than Aª A♥ A♣ A♦ will lose against the previous hand. For example, if you hold ♣ Jª J♥ J♦, you will lose to Q♣ Q♥ Qª Q♦, K♣ K♦ K♥ Kª and Aª A♦ A♣ A♥.
A basic but crucial aspect to understand this hand: here the suits do not have any importance. What matters is the range, which in poker is everything. So how do you rate a 4 of a kind? Let’s take a look at what the numbers tell us.
Poker is played with a 52-card poker deck. That means that there are 624 possible combinations to form 4 of a kind. There are also 156 unique poker ranks. Considering that a poker hand is made up of 5 cards, the kicker here is especially important.
From this a logical question follows: if we compare two equal poker hands made up of 5 cards each, which one would win?
The kicker is important because it is the card that gives real strength to the hand. A four of a kind with a lower kicker than another poker hand completely nullifies the strength of the lower ranked hand. That’s why range is crucial in poker hands: because in this particular hand, the fifth card has a lot to say. Not in all hands this is the case, but the kicker in a 4 of a kind is especially useful in case there is a tie and you have to compare hands.
The moral that can be drawn from these concepts summarized to the extreme (you can go much deeper into the comparisons with the kickers and the study of the range of hands), having 4 equal poker cards forms a poker, but it is the fifth card that has the last word and should not be underestimated.
Probabilities of forming a four of a kind in a game
Let’s look at several scenarios to see roughly what the probability is of making a 4 of a kind on the flop, turn and river.
Let’s see the odds of getting a poker in Texas Hold’em:
Round Probability of 0,02% With 5 randomly chosen cards
Flop 0,25% With a pair
Turn 2,12% With flop and 1 ranked card
River 2,17% With 1 ranked card on the board
And these would be the options that we would have to form a poker in a game of Omaha:
Round Probability of 0,02% With 5 randomly chosen cards
Flop 0,28% With a pair
Flop 0,53% With 2 pairs
Turn 2,22% With flop and 1 ranked card
River 2,27% With 1 ranked card on the board
About preflop play
Since you will have to get your hands on the study of hand ranges in poker, at the same time take advantage of and improve your preflop game, something that will help you not only to be prepared to play well in case you have within your reach to hit four of the same cards, but also for any situation throughout your career as a poker player.
• American Airlines. It is the common name for A♦ A♣. They can be of any suit. It is by far the best poker hand you can be dealt preflop.
• Ana Kournikova. Another nickname used to talk about A♥ K♣, although in America it is better known as “big slick”. It is the fourth best hand preflop, but played badly it can give us a good scare.
• Q K. Known as “The Marriage”, because it is king and queen, it is a good preflop hand to start playing with and it opens the doors to a 4 of a kind if luck smiles on us. In any case, you can go for several draws depending on what comes on the flop. In Texas Hold’em, a preflop raise in any of these cases is a good way to start the game.
