You win by simply having the five lowest cards. In ace-to-five lowball straights and flushes do not prevent a hand from being low. Ace-to-five lowball gets its name because the best hand at that form is 5-4-3-2-A.

The most popular forms of lowball are ace-to-five lowball (also known as California lowball), and deuce-to-seven lowball (also known as Kansas City lowball). Sometimes straights and/or flushes count in determining which hand is highest but not in determining which hand is lowest, being reckoned as a no-pair hand in the latter instance, so that a player with such a holding can win both ways and thus take the entire pot. A sub-variant within this category is 'high-low poker', in which the highest and lowest hands split the pot, with the highest hand taking any odd chips if the pot does not divide equally. There are three methods of ranking low hands, called ace-to-five low, deuce-to-seven low, and ace-to-six low. Lowball inverts the normal ranking of poker hands. Several variations of lowball poker exist, differing in whether aces are treated as high cards or low cards, and whether straights and flushes are used.

Lowball or low poker is a variant of poker in which the normal ranking of hands is inverted.

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