In 5-Card Draw, one of the most popular versions of poker, you start with a specific question: “Can I win with the cards I have decided to play?” The final answer is yes or no. After looking at your initial cards (initial findings) you can be satisfied with what you have (preliminary data) or seek some new cards (new experiments). But in the end you must openly “show your cards” (results). Your cards give you the answer. You cannot hide a card, nor can you add an undealt card to make your hand look better. Playing poker and writing the Results section of a scientific paper have similarities, as I will point out in this article.In poker, how you present your cards affects how your competitors grasp the importance of the cards. One winning set of cards in poker is the straight , defined as 5 consecutively sequenced cards (e.g., 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). You may have this group of cards, but if you present them as 6, 10, 8, 7, 9, your straight is not immediately evident. The worth of cards when presented in a logical manner is clearer and easier to grasp. The same holds true for your Results section. Your important results may be better understood if presented in a certain order.There are several options for the presentation order of results (Table 1? ); one may work better than another for the type of study being reported. The most straightforward approach is to use a chronological order with subheadings that parallel the methods and their sequence presented earlier in the paper. This order allows readers to more easily go back and refer to the methods associated with a given result.View this table:Table 1. Options for presentation order of results.A second approach is to group results …
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