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Does 2pair beat a straight?

Both a straight and two pair represent strong poker hands in games like Texas Hold'em, Stud, and Omaha. The question is – does two pair beat a straight? The answer in this case is no. A straight ranks higher than two pair in the poker hand rankings, and let's take a look at the math to find out why.

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Strong poker hands don’t come around all that often, so it’s crucial to know just where your made hand stacks up in the poker hand rankings. If it’s a hand like two pair or a straight, it probably has a good chance of holding up as the winner when you take it to showdown.

Both a straight and two pair represent strong poker hands in games like Texas Hold’em, Stud, and Omaha. The question is – does two pair beat a straight?

The answer in this case is no. A straight ranks higher than two pair in the poker hand rankings, and let’s take a look at the math to find out why.

Why Does A Straight Beat Two Pair?

When trying to make the best five-card hand from a 52-card deck, a straight occurs mathematically less often than two pair. Because of this, the straight is harder to make and therefore outranks two pair.

The Math Behind A Straight

A 52-card deck yields ten distinct ways to make a straight. The following hand represents an example of a five-card straight: Note that the probabilities we’ll talk about in this article exclude straight flushes and royal flushes, which count as their own categories in the poker hand rankings. In the case of a straight, the suits don’t affect the hand strength, and any queen-high straight represents the same distinct hand no matter what the suits. While there are only ten distinct ways to make a straight, the combinations of different suits yield 10,200 different ways to make a five-card straight from a 52-card deck.

The Math Behind Two Pair

Pulling five random cards from a 52-card deck produces 858 distinct two pair hands. A two pair hand looks like this: Note that the suits don’t matter when it comes to determining a distinct two pair hand, but the kicker does. For example, A♠A♥5♦5♣T♣ and A♠A♥5♦5♣3♣ make two different distinct two pair hands. The suits do count toward overall ways to draw two pair, however, and a 52-card deck produces 123,552 ways to make two pair. Texas Hold’em, the world’s most popular poker game, tasks the player with making the five-card hand out of seven possible cards (two hole cards and five community cards). You have a 4.62% chance of making a straight in Texas Hold’em with all five community cards on the board. Two pair, however, happens 23.5% of the time.

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What is a tanker in poker?

It is presumably a contraction of the words 'time bank', the option to request more time on a decision when playing online poker. A player can be described as 'tanking' or 'going into the tank' when they spend time pondering a decision rather than acting immediately.

888poker.com - Tank - Poker Definition | 888poker

Explanation of Tank

At some point in history, the term “time bank” became abbreviated into “tank” to describe a player who is taking a while to make a decision (regardless of whether his time bank was activated). E.g. “we shoved the river and villain tanked hard before folding”. Although no time bank usually exists for live play, there have been measures instigated in recent times to prevent players from timewasting and excessive holywooding when making decisions. It a player is taking too long to act in a live setting, his opponents may have the option to “call the floor(man)” who will usually set a clock. Some live tournaments are even attempting to implement time tokens where a players needs to exchange one of his tokens if he wishes to take longer than normal to make a decision. Example of Tank used in a sentence -> Villain tanked the river for several minutes before finally folding.

How to Use Tank as Part of Your Poker Strategy

For online players, all are given equal time banks. We should not be afraid to take our time making decisions. When we face an opponent who doesn’t think as deeply, we’ll often have an advantage purely by making use of a free available resource. For live players, a balance needs to be found. We should not be afraid to take time making our decisions, but we also want to be reasonable and respectful to our opponents. Excessive tanking is considered bad etiquette and even an angle shoot in some cases. On the flip side of the coin, while we should be patient with tanking opponents, we should feel comfortable calling the floor if we feel a line has been crossed.