In a game of poker, hand rankings are mostly the same except when you're playing the Omaha Hi/Lo variation which uses low hand ranking to win, yet it's still based on the traditional poker hands which ranks from highest to lowest.

Royal flush is the highest poker hand and is made up of an ace, king, queen, jack and ten in the same suit. All suits are considered equal so all royal flushes are equal and this is an unbeatable hand.

Straight flush consists of five cards of the same suit in sequence like J-10-9-8-7 in spades, with the hand containing the highest top card having the highest hand. An ace can be considered as a low card when its placed as 5-4-3-2-A all in hearts, with the 5 of hearts as the highest card.

Next high hand is the four of a kind. This hand consist of four cards of the same rank like four kings or four twos and the fifth can be any card called the kicker. When a tie occurs then the highest four set wins and based on the example above, the four of kings will beat the four of two but when (and this rarely happens) two hands have the same four of a kind, then the one with the highst kicker is higher.

Full house is made up of three cards of the same rank and then two cards of another same rank or a pair. For example, K-K-K-8-8, when there are two full house or more, the one with the highest three cards wins.

Flush is having five cards with the same suit and in a game where there are two flushes the highest card concludes which is higher such as, Q-10-9-6-4 of spades beats J-10-9-6-4 of hearts.

A straight hand is five cards of different suits but in sequence like Q of hearts- J of spades- 10 of diamonds- 9 of hearts and 8 of diamonds and the highest card in this case the queen will determine the higher card between two straights.

Three of a kind is a five card hand that is made up of three cards in the same rank plus any two cards. The one with the highest three card is considered higher if there is a tie.

Two pairs is two cards with the same rank, another two cards with the same rank different from the first one and a side card such as 10-10-5-5-K, if a tie occurs the one with the highest pair wins like in the example the highest pair is two 10s and when faced with 9-9-8-8-Q hand then the first hand wins.

A Pair consist of five cards with two cards of same rank and three unrelated cards and when compared with the same hand, the one with the highest two pair wins.

High card is a combination of any cards that don't match with any of the hands above and the hand with the highest card is the higher hand.

Texas Hold’em Poker has become one of the most played game over the internet giving excitement to the online world. It’s a skilled game and while lady luck is involved, a player still needs good poker skills to win a hand. On another thought, one of the most popular trend over the web are the social networking sites and one very popular site is Facebook with over 62 million users to date. So it is no surprise then that the two shall meet and thus you have Texas Hold’em poker on Facebook, making zillions of fans from online poker and Facebook happy.

So is Facebook poker the same as any other poker game? Of course it is, but you still need to keep in mind a few factors to accumulate all those Facebook poker chips and one thing to always remember is to take the full benefits of your big hands. This means that you take risks for those hands that will offer big gains and keep from wasting poker your poker chips from hands that don’t offer much gain.

It is sometimes easy to chase after hands that have slim chances of winning and pots that are not that rewarding. It is always good to trust your instincts because some just completely ignore killer hands and let it go to waste because they didn’t go with what their instinct told them to do.

Patience is a virtue you need to have when playing Texas Hold’em on Facebook. It’s often easy to get carried away with your emotions and throw it all in just because you hold a good hand, not waiting to see and observe if other players also hold good or better hand than yours, when it’s time for a showdown they win because they were more casual and patiently observed each play.

So go on and have a blast Facebooking and playing Texas Hold’em at the same time.

Blackjack has a well known and accepted cheat which is called card counting. Although most casino owners would rather have this declared illegal, card counting was said to be legal because blackjack players are just making use of the data available to them.

Blackjack card counting is mostly about counting the ratio of high card versus the low cards remaining in the deck. Some players mistakenly assume that card counting means taking note of the number of cards that have been dealt, making them wary of using this cheat when playing blackjack. Heck, who wouldn’t be intimidated by the staggering amount of cards you have to count when using this method, right?

Here you will be shown how to count cards using Micheal Shackleford’s method, who by the way is also known as the Wizard of Odds, called the Wizards Ace Five Count.

This is a simple counting system and like any other system, you begin at zero (0), once an ace is dealt, player must subtract one (-1) from the total. When a five (5) is dealt a player must add one (+1) to the total. When the first round is done you will have a running total with which to adjust your bets.

If your total count is zero or on the negative side you must keep your bet at one unit but if the count is positive you have to increase your bet to two units times the amount of the count. If your count is +1 you would bet two units and with a count of +2 you can wager two four units.

You can gain the most advantage out of this cheat if you use this at a table with the dealer standing on soft 17, this cheat can give you approximately 0.22% advantage. The Wizards Ace Five Count is simple and easy to learn compared to some other complex card counting methods, so have fun learning and winning.

Yes, that’s right table manners are not just limited to dining tables but when playing blackjack, there are some table etiquette a player has to be familiar with to avoid reproof from the the dealer.

= Don’t touch the chips after you have placed your bet or else the dealer might mistakenly think you are covertly adding chips to your bet because of a good hand.

= When doubling down, your additional chips must be placed right next to the original bet and don’t place it on top of them.

= Do not touch your cards in a London Deal game of blackjack where your cards are face up, this is to prevent players from marking their cards.

= When playing Nevada Deal, don’t handle the cards more than what is required and when you pick your cards to look at them avoid touching them with two hands. Always keep it in plain sight above the table.

= Hand signals are very important when playing in a crowded casino so the dealer will not misunderstand when you want to be hit or to stand. When you request for another card, do a scratching movement at the back of your card after saying “Hit me”.

= Waving your hand and saying “Stand” is the proper hand signal for standing.

= If you want to tip the dealer, the chops you want to use as tips should be place on the edge of the betting place between the dealer and you.

Knowing these table manners when playing on landbased casino will go a long way to helping you get en edge over a game of blackjack.

Once you have a handle on the ins and outs of blackjack and its strategies, you can now proceed to card counting. Card counting is just basically an extension of blackjack’s strategy and contrary to popular belief, it does not require that you have a very photographic memory or a PhD in mathematics. Card counting is not necessarily about counting the number of cards that have been played in the game, its about keeping track of the ratio between the high and low cards that have not been dealt yet.

You have a great advantage over the house knowing that there are still more high cards left on the deck compared to low cards because this significantly increases your chances of being dealt a blackjack. Card counting also lets you know that the dealer may more likely bust a hand so you have the opportunity to double down.

Card counting in blackjack has been brought to court by casinos saying that it should be deemed cheating and therefore illegal, but the court has ruled that what players are doing when card counting is just a skillful use of information already available to them and cannot be called cheating.

When you have a fresh deck of cards, you can start by counting by counting the deck as zero and adding(+1) or subtract (-1) to the total counts. Based on this counts you can either increase or downplay your wager.Learning to count cards is not that hard what you need is to practice a lot and with so many casinos available out there just go and give it a try.