MySQL: Getting a row number (ranking) for a specific row

Question

I have a users table that has a column called money_sent. I want to order this table by money_sent in descending order, and then find out what "rank" a specific user has.

For example, only 111 people have spent more money than User 12392, so they would be rank 112.

How could I query this?

Answer 1

How about:

SELECT count(*) FROM users WHERE money_sent < (
    SELECT money_sent FROM users WHERE user = 'joe'
);

Answer 2

SELECT Row,user, money_sent
FROM (SELECT @row := @row + 1 AS Row, user, money_sent 
       FROM table1 order by money_sent desc) 
As derived1