Online Poker: Hand Rankings, Game Rules and Casino Poker Tables

Online poker is much easier to follow once you can read a single hand, and that is the one skill this series sets out to teach. A poker room deals the cards, counts the pot and names the winner for you, but the result only makes sense when you know what you hold and who comes out ahead. The 17 guides start with the order of hands, the deck and the steps of an online hand, then turn to Texas Hold’em, with kickers and tied pots, and go on to Five Card Draw, Seven Card Stud, Razz and both Omaha games. The last six pages cover table games played against a dealer: Caribbean Stud Poker, Three Card Poker, Casino Hold’em, Ultimate Texas Hold’em and Texas Hold’em Bonus Poker, together with an overview that compares them. Each guide ends with exercises in which you pick the winning hand, and the dealer guides also ask you to total the bets in chips, while strategy stays out of the subject altogether, and near the end you will find the rules for playing online in Ontario and Alberta and the help lines of every province and territory.

Four Stages, One Method

The guides run in four stages, and each stage uses what came before it. Even so, every page can be read alone and points to the one that follows.

• Stage 1 (three pages) supplies the vocabulary: the ranking, the deck and one online hand from the first card to the showdown.
• Stage 2 (three pages) uses it in Texas Hold’em, with kickers and split pots.
• Stage 3 (five pages) changes which cards count, or which hand wins, in five other games.
• Stage 4 (six pages) is poker against the dealer, with an overview and one guide for each of five games.

What It Means to Read a Hand

The skill taught here is a narrow one: name the best five cards you can make, then work out whose hand is stronger. Reading opponents, bluffing and choosing what to bet all fall outside the series. Four questions carry you through every game:

1. Which cards am I allowed to use? Hold’em accepts any five of the seven, while Omaha insists on exactly two hole cards.
2. What kind of hand do those cards form?
3. Which player’s kind of hand ranks higher?
4. If the kinds are equal, do the remaining cards separate the hands, or is the pot split?

The Order of Hands

One scale measures hands in nearly all the games here, and the table lists it from the strongest hand to the weakest. The royal flush is merely the top straight flush, which explains ten rows for nine kinds of hand.

Suits have no rank on this scale. The cards inside two hands of one kind separate them, and a pot is shared only when those cards match too.

Guides by Stage

Stage 1 builds the vocabulary that later pages reuse.

• Poker hand rankings: every hand from royal flush down to high card, and how often it appears.
• Poker cards and suits: the 52 cards, their ranks and the shorthand used to write hands.
• Poker betting rounds: a whole online hand, blinds first and showdown last.

Stage 2 puts the ranking to work in Texas Hold’em, the game most people try first.

• Texas Hold’em hands: how seven cards become one five-card hand.
• Poker kicker rules: the spare cards that break a tie between similar hands.
• Poker showdown rules: the order of showing, tied hands and divided pots.

Stage 3 holds on to the method and varies which cards count or which hand wins. A low hand features in Omaha Hi-Lo and Razz.

• Omaha poker rules: a hand built from exactly two hole cards.
• Omaha Hi-Lo rules: one pot with a high half and a low half.
• Seven Card Stud rules: five streets, visible cards and seven private cards.
• Five Card Draw rules: dealing, discarding and showing five cards.
• Razz poker rules: the pot goes to the lowest hand, with aces counted low.

Stage 4 sits at table games against the dealer, and every round is worked out in chips.

• Casino poker games: what dealer poker is and where the five games part ways.
• Three Card Poker rules: three cards each, a queen-high minimum and a side wager.
• Ultimate Texas Hold’em rules: a raise whose size depends on when you make it.
• Caribbean Stud Poker rules: five cards, one of the dealer’s showing, and a raise.
• Texas Hold’em Bonus Poker rules: bets at each street and a bonus on your first two cards.
• Casino Hold’em rules: one call bet after the flop, plus a 2 Hand variant.

Poker Against the Dealer

What other players hold has no bearing on these games. A dealer working from fixed rules supplies the opposing hand, and winning bets are paid at odds taken from a posted paytable. In each game you make one main decision, and an optional side bet may sit beside it.

Where the Figures Come From

The counts and chances in the guides were produced by a computer that ran through all possible deals, from the 2,598,960 five-card hands to the 133,784,560 seven-card hands. The exercises are checked by the same program, so every answer follows from the cards printed on the page. Dealer-game paytables are common published versions as read in October 2026, and each guide reminds you to confirm the table in the game’s information panel, since other versions exist. No hand or result is ever predicted.

Where to Play Poker Online in Canada

Online rules vary by province. In Ontario, iGaming Ontario sets the minimum age at 19 and requires players to be physically in the province, and its directory of regulated games includes poker. Alberta’s regulated iGaming market opened on July 13, 2026, under the regulation of the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission, and the minimum age there is 18. Other provinces have their own rules, so confirm the age limit and the local rules before you register anywhere.

Whichever site you use, begin at the rules screen and read which ranking applies, what the betting limits are and, in the dealer games, how the paytable and the qualifier are set. The guides cover common versions, and your screen has the last word.

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Staying in Control

Online hands come quickly, and time and chips can slip away faster than they seem to. Pick a spending limit and a stopping time before you sit down, and hold to them. If gambling stops being fun, every province and territory has a line you can call, listed below, and our responsible gambling page covers more tools and support services.

Author:

Lucas Portela

Owner, BoldGambler • Avanhandava/SP

Oddsmaker, affiliate and content creator in the iGaming industry.

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