Poker hand rankings

Royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, high card — that is the whole ladder. In Texas Hold’em you make the best five-card hand out of seven cards: your two hole cards and the five on the board. Suits never rank, and only five cards ever count.

The ladder is built on rarity. A hand that turns up less often beats one that turns up more often, which is why a flush outranks a straight and a full house outranks both. Each row below shows the hand with cards from our tables and how often a Hold’em player ends a deal holding it.

Where the percentages come from: our poker engine went through all 133,784,560 possible sets of seven cards and picked the best five in each — an exact count, not a sample. An earlier version of this page used three million random deals, and the figures agreed to within two hundredths of a percent.

The ladder was fixed long before Hold’em, in games where each player got exactly five cards, so it follows five-card odds. With seven cards to choose from, every hand becomes more likely, but not evenly — and that produces one curious exception at the bottom.

Look at the last rows. In a five-card deal, half of all hands are nothing at all. With seven cards you finish with no pair only 17.4% of the time — less often than with two pair (23.5%). High card still ranks lowest, because any pair beats it. Rarity explains the ladder, but the ladder belongs to five-card poker, and nobody re-sorts it for Hold’em.

The top of the table moves as well. A royal flush is about 21 times more likely in Hold’em than in a five-card deal, a full house about 18 times. Even so, 1 in 30,940 is a long wait: a player who reaches the river in 50 hands a day would need, on average, about a year and eight months to make one.

Ties are settled by the best five cards and nothing else. Our engine turns every hand into a single number — the category first, then the ranks that matter, in order — so a tie at our tables means the two numbers are exactly equal, and the pot is split. This is what gets compared in each category:

• High card and flush: the top card; if it is equal, the second; and so on through all five.
• One pair: the pair, then up to three kickers in order. A♠ A♦ K♥ beats A♣ A♥ Q♠.
• Two pair: the higher pair, then the lower pair, then one kicker. K-K-4-4-2 beats Q-Q-J-J-A, and K-K-4-4-A beats K-K-4-4-Q.
• Three of a kind: the rank, then two kickers. Kickers only come into play when the three of a kind is shared, for example trips on the board.
• Straight and straight flush: only the top card. 6-5-4-3-2 beats 5-4-3-2-A.
• Full house: the three of a kind, then the pair. Kings full of sevens beats sevens full of kings.
• Four of a kind: the rank, then the kicker.
• Suits: never, in any category. If the best five cards match, the pot is split — the details are in kicker and split pots.

One heart in your hand can beat two

With four hearts on the board, a single heart in your hand completes a flush, and its rank is what counts. Here the ace of hearts beats the queen and jack of hearts together, because flushes are compared card by card from the top.

Flush or straight?

A flush beats a straight. Five cards of one suit are harder to collect than five in a row: 3.0% against 4.6% of Hold’em hands, 0.20% against 0.39% in a five-card deal. The same logic puts a full house above both.

Two pair and the kicker nobody holds

With two pair, exactly one kicker plays, and it may well be on the board. On A♥ K♦ 9♣ 9♠ 4♥, a player with A♠ Q♣ and a player with A♦ J♣ both have aces and nines with a king kicker. The queen and the jack never make it into the five cards, so the pot is split.

It works the other way too. On Q♠ Q♦ 9♣ 9♥ 3♠ both players have queens and nines from the board, and now the kicker in hand decides: K♥ 2♣ beats J♦ 8♣. And when the board shows two pairs and you hold a third, higher one, the board’s lower pair drops out: with Q♣ Q♦ on K♠ K♦ 8♣ 8♥ 4♠ you have kings and queens, which beats kings and eights with an ace.

The wheel

5-4-3-2-A is a straight, the lowest one. The ace plays as a one, so the hand is “five-high” and any straight to the six beats it. On 2♠ 3♦ 4♣ 9♥ K♠, A♦ 5♣ makes the wheel and 6♥ 5♦ makes a six-high straight. This is the only straight where the ace can be low: K-A-2-3-4 does not count.

Playing the board

Sometimes the five community cards are the best hand anybody can make. On 10♠ J♦ Q♣ K♥ A♠ the table shows a broadway straight; pocket aces add nothing, because three of a kind is lower than a straight. Everyone still in the hand plays the board and the pot is split. Before you raise with a hand like that, check whether your own cards play at all.

The costly mistakes with hand rankings are rarely about the order itself. They come from missing what the board allows. Before you call a big bet on the river, run three checks:

1. Is the board paired? Then a full house or four of a kind is possible.
2. Are three cards of one suit showing? Then someone may hold a flush.
3. Do three cards fit inside five ranks in a row, like 7-8-10 or J-Q-K? Then a straight is possible.

If all three answers are “no”, the best possible hand — the nuts — is three of a kind. On K♣ 7♦ 2♠ 4♥ 9♣, for example, nothing beats three kings. That is why a set wins so many big pots on quiet boards, and why a flush draw makes everyone nervous on wet ones. How often draws come in is covered in outs and pot odds.

One page with all ten hands, their Hold’em odds, the tie-break rules and the three board checks. The button prints only the sheet, not the whole page. Keep it next to the keyboard for your first sessions; most players stop looking at it within a week.