community card - best 5 card hand...

[ORGrinder]

...i'm not sure if this is a beginners question, or if it is more in-depth than that, but i figured this was the best place for it anyway.

i was a little confused about a player creating their best hand... i think i have it figured out but just want to check.

is it correct to say that a player creates the best possible 5 card hand using the 7 cards available to them (i.e. 2 hole cards and the 5 community cards)?

if that's correct, is it then accurate to say, for example, that if a

45678 - mixed suit

that if the player is holding a 3... the best hand possible for that player is STILL the 45678, and NOT the 34567.

further, is it correct to say that if a

45678 - mixed suit

is on the table and the player is holding a 9, that their best hand then becomes a 56789... and that this hand could be beat by another player holding a 9, 10 to make up the 6,7,8,9,10 str8?

i'm assuming with flushes, that since a flush is a flush, it doesn't matter if 4 hearts are on the table and you have 2, another play has only 1. either way it's still a flush at which point it would come down to high card? what if, however, the high card is on the table... do the flushes tie and therefore the pot is split?

thanks for the info folks. sorry if this is a silly question.

[ballbp]

You got it right. The straight would still be 8 high in your first question. Split the pot. And the same for the next question, anyone holding any cards to beat the board cards wins it. The flush question is correct too. Even if one guy has two suited cards, if the other guys one card makes the flush higher he wins.

[ORGrinder]

kewl deal. thanks a bunch.

the online descriptions of the game are confusing really... the way they're worded suggests that you have to use your two cards and any 3 of the community cards to make your hand.

most of them say something like

using your two cards and the 5 community cards, make the best 5 card hand.

it's a little misleading... sounds like you have to use both your cards.

really... it should be

use any 5 cards out of the 7 cards available to you to make your best 5 card hand.

anyway... thanks again for the info... it helped a lot.

[ORGrinder]

so i thought i had this all figured out, but then a game tossed me a twist last night.

i was playing online (at truepoker) and 4 hearts flopped on the table. 3 lowcards and the ace... so lets just say it was 3,6,10,A of hearts and 8 of clubs.

none of us had anything but a flush... i happened to be holding the king of hearts though. i ended up taking the pot with my flush.

what i don't understand, is that we all had Ace high flushes. why did i take the pot? shouldn't we all have slpit it? this makes me think that if all 5 of the hands cards are on the board (so, say, only 4 of the 5 cards to make a hand are on the board) that the person who has the BEST hole card to complete the 5 card hand takes the pot, even if the BEST card of the hand is on the board... am i making sense? i didn't think this was the case, but i must be wrong cuz i pulled a nice pot last night in this situation.

thanks again for the clarification.

[ballbp]

Right, when it comes to flushes, the five best cards used to make the flush count down from highest to lowest. Your hand was A K 10 8 6. Anyone else who had a heart, say it was a 9, ends up with A 10 9 8 6. Yours is better. Anyone who didn't have any heart still has a flush using the board cards but it only reads A 10 8 6 3. Make sense?

[ORGrinder]

gotcha... thanks for the info.