What to do?

[gza864]

Hi you all

I just started playing poker and I love it, but there a few things that are still not clear about the game to me, so I wanted to ask...

if my two hole cards are :spade7: and :spadeJ: and one of my friends has :spade7: and :spadeJ: too, and in the community cards we got :spade6::heart4::diamJ::diam8::diam2:.... so we both got pairs (:spadeJ: and :spadeJ:) so how do we decide who the winner is?

Thanks for your help in advance

[LouW]

It will be a split pot, seeing as you are both holding the same cards, however, if he was holding a higher card than you the kicker card would come into play and he would win.

[davidab157]

You can't both have exactly the same cards. There's only one jack of spades in the deck!

But yeah you make your best 5 card hand out of the 7 available. for example if you have J7 and your opponent has JT on a J4682 board, you have J7684 as your best hand and your opponent has JT684 as his best hand, and therefore he wins (start with highest card and move down until someone has a higher one).