Poker is full of slang terms and acronyms. You will find most of the abbreviations and terms in our detailed Poker Glossary. This page keeps things simple. Here you will find the standard poker hand rankings, which shows the best 5 card poker hands in order of strength. After that is an entertaining look at the nicknames assigned to different starting hands.
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The first thing any new poker player needs to learn is what beats what at the end of a hand. Poker uses 5 card hands. In the most popular game, Texas Hold’em, your best hand includes 5 cards out of the 7 total – your own 2 cards and the 5 community cards. It is possible to use any combination. This can be all 5 community cards, your own 2 cards with 3 community cards, or 1 of your own with 4 community cards.
| Poker Hand Name | Cards | Example Hand |
| Royal Flush | A, K, Q, J, 10 – same suit |  |
| Straight Flush | Five sequential cards – same suit |  |
| Four of a Kind | Four cards of the same value, one of each suit – fifth card doesn’t matter |  |
| Full House | Three cards of the same value, and a pair of an additional value |  |
| Flush | Five cards of the same suit – any order |  |
| Straight | Five sequential cards – any suit |  |
| Three of a Kind | Three cards of the same value – other two cards don’t matter |  |
| Two Pair | Two cards of the same value and two cards of a different value – fifth card doesn’t matter |  |
| One Pair | Two cards of the same value – other three cards don’t matter |  |
| No Pair | All five cards of different values and not all the same suit |
Many poker hands have slang terms once they are made. While these are not as prevalent as the nicknames given for starting hands, they are still worth knowing.
This is commonly known as ‘Pocket Rockets’ or ‘American Airlines’. The American Airlines is used as your hand matches the ‘AA’ that company uses on their planes. You might also hear this hand referred to as ‘Bullets’.
Kings are called Cowboys when you are dealt a pair before the flop. Some players also call them ‘Ace Magnets’. This is because it always feels like an ace hits the flop when you raise and get called holding King-King!
Surprisingly, this premium pocket pair does not have as many names as some of the other hands. Some players simply refer to it as ‘Ladies’.
The most common name for Jack-Jack is ‘Fish Hooks’. This is more for the fact that novice players get hooked into playing them than their chances of catching fish at the table. With 3 different over-pairs available, post-flop play can be tricky.
With the chances of an over-pair on the flop shooting up, some people refer to tens as ‘Tension’. This makes sense in the context of them being tricky to play, yet too high value to fold for a single bet.
The smaller the pair, the less you win with them, and the nicknames follow – with fewer and more obscure references the lower you go. Here is a selection of names for each lower pair:
Big Slick (ace king) was already covered above. This section includes notable nicknames for hands which contain aces and other side cards.
