Some games called lowball or low poker are played where the lowest ranking hand wins. There are three methods of ranking low hands, called ace to five low, ace to six low and deuce to seven low. The ace-to-five method is most common. 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). 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.
Certain variants use hands of only three cards, either high or low. Three-card low hands can be ranked by any of the three methods above, although with three cards they become ace-to-three (rather than ace-to-five), deuce-to-five, and ace-to-four. The ace-to-three method is the most common, just as the ace-to-five method is most common method for five cards. Three-card high hands are ranked in one of two ways: either with or without straights and flushes. Without them (which is the most common, and used such games as Chinese poker), the hands are simply no pair, one pair, and three of a kind. If you add straights and flushes, the order of hands should be changed to reflect the correct probabilities: no pair, one pair, flush, straight, three of a kind, straight flush. This order is used, for example, in mambo stud.
Some poker games are played with a deck that has had certain cards removed, usually low-ranking ones. For example, in Australia the game of Manila uses a 32-card deck in which all cards below the rank of 7 are removed, and Mexican stud strips the 8s, 9s, and 10s. In both of these games, a flush ranks above a full house, because having fewer cards of each suit available makes flushes rarer.
Some games add one or more unconventional hands, or have special exceptions to the rules above. For example, in the game of pai gow poker as played in Nevada, a WHEEL (5-4-3-2-A) ranks above a king-high straight, but below an ace-high straight. This is not the case in California, where the nearly identical game is played under the name double-hand poker using traditional hand values.