Razz Poker Hand Rankings for Beginners

In Razz, the lowest hand wins — and the best possible hand is the wheel, A-2-3-4-5. Razz flips standard poker on its head: straights and flushes don’t count, the ace is always low, and pairs hurt you. If you already know Texas Hold’em rankings, forget most of them here. The only thing that matters is getting five low, unpaired cards.

The one rule that changes everything

In standard high poker you build up toward flushes and full houses. In Razz you build down. Your goal is five different low cards, and the hand with the lowest high card wins. Because straights and flushes don’t count against you, and the ace plays low, the theoretical best hand is:

5♠ 4♦ 3♣ 2♥ A♠ — the wheel (also called the “bicycle”), read as a five-low.

That’s it. No hand beats a wheel in Razz. The worst hand, by contrast, is five high cards with pairs — something like a pair of kings, which is nearly unplayable.

How to read a Razz hand: highest card down

To compare two Razz hands, line up each hand’s cards from highest to lowest and compare top card first. The lower high card wins. If they tie, move to the next card down, and so on.

• An eight-low beats a nine-low.
• Between two eight-lows, the next card breaks it: 8-6-4-2-A (eight-six) beats 8-7-5-3-2 (eight-seven).

You name a Razz hand by its two highest cards: “eight-six low,” “seven-five low,” and so on. The wheel is the ultimate “five-low.”

The Razz ranking ladder (best to worst)

Here are the strongest Razz hands in order. Notice they’re all low hands — this table reads the opposite direction from a normal hand-rankings chart:

Anything higher than a nine-low — a ten-low, or worse, a hand forced to use a pair — is usually a losing hand in Razz. Contrast this with standard rankings on the what beats what chart, where high cards win; Razz is the mirror image.

Why pairs are the enemy

In Razz you play a seven-card game (like Seven Card Stud) and make your best five-card low. A pair forces you to skip one of the paired cards and reach for a higher fifth card, which weakens your hand. Example:

You hold seven cards: 2♠ 2♦ 4♣ 5♥ 7♠ 9♦ K♣. You can’t use both twos — a pair. Your best five low cards are 7♠ 5♥ 4♣ 2♠ A… but you have no ace, so it’s 7-5-4-2 plus the next-lowest unpaired card, the nine, giving a nine-seven low. Without the duplicate two, that same hand could have been much lower. Pairs quietly cost you the pot.

A worked showdown

Two players reach showdown in Razz:

• Player A: 8♥ 6♦ 4♣ 3♠ A♥ → highest card 8, then 6 → eight-six low.
• Player B: 8♠ 7♦ 5♣ 2♥ A♠ → highest card 8, then 7 → eight-seven low.

Both are eight-lows, so compare the second card: A’s six beats B’s seven (lower wins). Player A takes the pot with the eight-six. The ace and other low cards never even come into play — the decision was made at the second card. This is the essence of reading lowball: go highest-to-lowest and stop at the first difference.

How Razz fits with other lowball games

Razz shares its ace-to-five ranking with the low half of Omaha Hi-Lo and Stud Hi-Lo, and with California lowball. If you understand Razz, you already understand how to make a low hand in those split-pot games. For the broader picture of when low hands win and how “lowest” is defined across formats, see what is the lowest hand in poker. And because the ace’s dual role trips up beginners, our ace-high explainer shows how the same card behaves in high games.

Bottom line

Razz rewards the lowest hand: the wheel (A-2-3-4-5) is unbeatable, the ace always plays low, and straights and flushes don’t count. Read hands from the highest card down, chase five low unpaired cards, and treat every pair as a liability. Get comfortable with the mirror-image logic, then explore the rest of the format on the other variants hub, or return to the hand rankings home base.