Razz Poker Hand Rankings Cheat Sheet

In razz, the lowest hand wins, the ace is always low, and straights and flushes don’t count. Read your five lowest unpaired cards from the top down: the hand with the smaller high card wins, and if those tie you compare the next card. The single best hand is 5-4-3-2-A, the wheel. This page is a quick-reference cheat sheet you can scan mid-hand or print out.

Want the full walkthrough of the deal and betting? See the razz poker rules. For play advice, jump to razz poker strategy.

The one rule that flips everything

Razz uses the same seven-card stud deal, but you’re chasing the worst high-poker hand. Three things trip up newcomers:

• The ace is low. It counts as a 1, making it the most valuable card in the deck.
• Straights and flushes are ignored. They neither help nor hurt. Five low cards in sequence is a perfect hand, not a straight.
• Only pairs hurt you. A pair replaces one of your five ranking cards with a duplicate, forcing a higher card into your hand.

Razz hand rankings, best to worst

Every razz hand is named by its highest card, then its second-highest as a tiebreaker. Here is the order from unbeatable down to the weakest playable holdings.

Rank	Example five cards	Reads as
1 (nuts)	5-4-3-2-A	”five low” (the wheel)
2	6-4-3-2-A	”six-four low”
3	6-5-3-2-A	”six-five low”
4	7-4-3-2-A	”seven-four low”
5	7-5-4-2-A	”seven-five low”
6	8-4-3-2-A	”smooth eight”
7	8-7-6-5-4	”rough eight”
8	9-x-x-x-x	”nine low”
9	T-x-x-x-x	”ten low”
lower	pair or a face-card high	weak or dead

Smooth vs. rough at a glance

“Smooth” and “rough” describe how good your backup cards are behind the same top card. Memorize these three comparisons and you’ll rarely misread a showdown:

• 7-5-4-3-2 beats 7-6-5-4-3 — same seven high, but 5 beats 6 on the second card.
• 6-5-4-3-A beats 6-5-4-3-2 — identical down to the last card, where the ace wins.
• Any eight beats any nine — the top card is compared first, before anything else.

Starting-hand quick guide (third street)

Razz is won and lost on third street, when you hold three cards. Use this shorthand to decide whether to enter the pot.

Your three cards	Verdict
Three to a wheel (A-2-3, A-2-4, A-3-4)	Raise — premium
Three unpaired cards, all 7 or lower	Play strongly
Three unpaired cards, all 8 or lower	Playable, watch up cards
One card 9 or higher	Marginal — need a live low and position
A pair, or two cards 10+	Fold

Worked example: reading two boards fast

Say it’s fifth street and you need to know who’s ahead right now.

• You: (A♣ 4♦) 3♠ 7♥ 9♦ — drop nothing, order them: 9-7-4-3-A, a “nine low.”
• Opponent: (x x) 8♠ 2♦ K♣ — that king is a brick. Even with two perfect hole cards their best is 8-2-K-something, a “king low.”

You’re comfortably ahead with a nine to their king, and you’re still drawing to improve. This is the core cheat-sheet skill: strip suits, drop pairs, read top-down, and compare high cards first. On the next street you catch the 5♥ and your low becomes 9-7-5-4-3 — actually slightly worse to read but you now also hold a made-hand backup, and any small card gives you a monster seven or eight low.

Where razz sits among lowball games

Razz uses the ace-to-five (California) low ranking, the same low system as seven-card stud hi-lo and Omaha hi-lo. That means the ace is low and straights and flushes don’t count. Don’t confuse it with deuce-to-seven low, used in games like 2-7 lowball, where the ace is high and straights and flushes do count against you — there, 7-5-4-3-2 is the nuts, not 5-4-3-2-A. Keeping the two systems straight is the most common source of showdown misreads for players who jump between mixed games.

Print-and-play summary

• Lowest hand wins; ace is low; straights and flushes don’t count.
• Read five lowest unpaired cards top-down; lower high card wins, then compare downward.
• The nuts is 5-4-3-2-A (the wheel).
• Aim for three unpaired cards, all eight or lower, ideally with an ace.
• Fold pairs and high cards; attack opponents showing bricks.

Keep this beside you until the inverted logic feels automatic. Then move on to full-hand tactics in the razz strategy guide, cross-check the underlying logic against standard hand rankings, or browse more lowball formats in the poker variants hub.