At The Gang showdown, the team’s final red chips must place players’ best five-card poker hands in weakest-to-strongest order. Earlier white, yellow and orange estimates help communicate during the heist; they do not decide whether it succeeds. The most common close calls involve kickers and genuine ties.
What is the poker-hand order?
From weaker to stronger, the English rulebook lists: high card, pair, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush, royal flush. A player makes the best five-card combination from their two private cards and the five shared cards. You do not have to use both private cards, or even one, when the board itself supplies the best five.
How does the red-chip showdown work?
Once the river card and red chips are set, reveal and compare final hands in ascending red-star order. The 1-star holder should have the weakest hand and the highest star the strongest. If every placement respects the ranking, crack a vault. If at least one placement is wrong, trigger an alarm. The group wins after three successful heists and loses after three failures.
A player who ranked their hand correctly early can still move at later colors: only the completed river hand decides the final red order. This is why the chips deliberately have four colors.
What is a kicker?
When two players share a hand category, compare the parts that define that category first. With a pair, compare the pair value. If equal, compare the highest remaining card, then the next and then the last. Those remaining cards are kickers. With two pair, compare the higher pair, then the lower pair, then the fifth card. A three of a kind compares the three-card rank before its two kickers.
Example: both players have a pair of sevens. One player’s best remaining three cards are A-J-9; the other’s are A-10-9. The first hand is stronger because the second kicker is a jack rather than a ten. No suit breaks this tie.
What is a true tie?
Two players are truly tied if their best five cards rank exactly the same, after all relevant kickers. For example, if the shared cards are 2-2-A-J-9 and two players’ pocket cards are all below the board’s 9 without improving a hand, each plays the same five-card pair of twos. The tied players may hold red chips in either relative order. They must still be in the right position relative to everyone else.
A shared straight or flush does not automatically mean a tie. A private card may improve the five-card combination. Evaluate the actual best five before calling it tied.
How does an ace work in a straight?
The ace can be high in 10-J-Q-K-A or low in A-2-3-4-5. It cannot wrap in the middle: K-A-2-3-4 is not a straight. For a flush, compare card ranks from highest down if both players have one; the four suits have distinct printed colors for visibility, not a priority order.
Does a tie cause an alarm?
No. The publisher’s true-tie rule explicitly disregards which tied player has the higher chip, provided the ordering against all other players remains correct. A merely similar category, such as two different pairs, is not a true tie.
More The Gang guides
- The Gang game overview
- How to play
- Cooperative strategy and tips
- Poker hands, showdown and true ties
- More Players expansion and Deluxe edition
Sources and scope
Checked September 2026 against the Thames & Kosmos English base rulebook and the Deluxe rulebook. Use the rules and cards in your specific edition for variant effects.