Re: dumb question from a newbie about hand rankings
 

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the Queen's Porter had the right to set rules of card games

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I did a Google search on “Queen’s Porter.” It’s the name of a quarter horse, if anyone’s looking for stallion service. My research didn’t yield anything else of significance.

Seriously, Aaron, do you happen to remember your source? If not, please don’t spend any time on this question.

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Types of hands are ranked with the less frequent higher, within types the more frequent the higher.

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Fascinating.

Re: dumb question from a newbie about hand rankings
 

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there are 10 straight flushes per suit-using the ace for both high and low-yet there are only thirteen quads-
even allowing for the royals(4) that still leaves 36 straight flushes as compared to the 13 quads-making
the four of a kind much rarer by a factor of almost 3x.

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Not quite--you forget about kickers. Each four-of-a-kind hand has 48 possible kickers, so there are 624(?) different four-of-a-kind hands.

Re: dumb question from a newbie about hand rankings
 

The hand strengths ARE in order of least to greatest possiblity as mentioned above. but remember that the probabilites were calculated as in dealing 5 cards randomly out of the 52 card deck.

as for actual card ranking (like ace high beating queen high, or a pair of 8s beating a pair of 4s), that of couse was arbitrarily chosen since having any pair or straight or flush is just as likely as any other ranked hand of the same type.