Poker Hand Rankings Guide: Chart, Probabilities & Tips

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Full houses become easier to make in short deck, while flushes are more difficult. When you play with wild cards – for example in the Five-Card Draw variant ‘Deuces Wild’ – you add the possibility of five-of-a-kind, which beats a royal flush. Everything from Texas Hold’em to Draw poker, Stud, Omaha, and almost any other poker variant you can think of uses the poker hand rankings above. In the event of a tie, just check the table below – and remember, if hands are exactly the same they will split the pot equally. When your two hole cards in Texas hold’em make a pair, you hold a ‘pocket pair’.
Use our hand comparator tool to practice reading boards quickly, or get live reps at the free Hold’em table where every showdown labels the winning hand. As a Texas Hold’em starting hand, 7-2 offsuit is widely considered the worst — the two cards are too low and too disconnected to make strong pairs, straights, or flushes. At showdown, the worst holding is a High Card hand with low cards. If all five cards are identical in rank, it’s a tie and the pot is split. The only exception is Short Deck Hold’em (6+ poker), where the 36-card deck makes flushes rarer than full houses, so flush beats full house in that variant. In Texas Hold’em cash games and real money pokies australia tournaments, the most common winning hand at showdown is one pair — specifically, top pair with a good kicker.
Because there are fewer cards of each suit, making a flush is now harder than making a full house — the opposite of standard poker. Being dealt a royal flush in five cards is about 1 in 649,740 — there are only 4 royal flushes among 2,598,960 possible hands. A full house is the fourth-strongest hand, so everything below it — flush, straight, three of a kind, and weaker — loses to it.
This is the lowest-ranked card in the poker hand rankings. A Full House consists of three cards of a single rank and two cards of another rank. When learning how to play poker, knowing the poker hands hierarchy is the only way to tell if you have the winning or losing hand; you don’t want to rely on the dealer for that. Knowing how your hand stacks up against your opponents’ hand is critical to understanding the game.
If quads are on the board, anyone with an ace in their hole cards has quads with an ace kicker. A royal flush is a straight flush, but not every straight flush is a royal flush. This is the rarest hand on poker hands charts and is unbeatable. The royal flush is the most powerful hand in poker. In this section, you’ll learn about every hand in the poker rankings in more detail, complete with clear definitions and examples. Your hand will lose to anything above it in the poker hand rankings, and beat anything below it. Without that knowledge, you won’t be able to figure out your own hand strength, let alone whether your opponents have you beat.
Knowing the best hands will help you win more, beat your friends at home, and become a better player This is the same for all the most popular 52-card standard poker variations, including Texas Hold’em, Omaha, and Seven-Card Stud. The probabilities shown are the exact combinatorial odds of making each hand from a 52-card deck. Hand-ranking order and tie-break (kicker) rules follow the standard high-poker rankings used across Texas Hold’em, Omaha, and Stud. Meanwhile, at the bottom, there are 1,302,540 High Card hands — roughly half the deck of possible outcomes produces nothing better than a high card.
Three-of-a-Kind is a decent hand in poker, where you have three cards that have the same value. If both Three-of-a-kinds within the Full House are equal, the winning hand will be the highest Pair in the hand. However, if two players both have a Full House, the one with the highest Three-of-a-kind wins. It is a very strong hand and can only be beaten by Royal or Straight Flushes (or a higher four-of-a-kind), but is a lot more common. It consists of four of the same value card, for instance four aces.
Note that under ace-to-five low rules, straights, flushes and straight flushes are not possible, so such hands are instead high card hands. Three of a kind, also known as trips or a set, is a hand that contains three cards of one rank and two cards of two other ranks (the kickers), such as 2♦ ۲♠ ۲♣ K♠ ۶♥ (“three of a kind, twos” or “trip twos” or a “set of twos”). A royal flush or royal straight flush is a hand that contains an ace-high straight flush, such as A♦ K♦ Q♦ J♦ ۱۰♦, and is the best possible hand in ace-high games when wild cards are not used.
In poker, players form sets of five playing cards, called hands, according to the rules of the game. Three of a kind always beats two pair in standard poker hand rankings. Knowing the rough probability of each hand helps you size bets, decide whether to chase a draw, and read what hands an opponent is realistically representing. At the same time, when you flop a set, you’ll usually be ahead of any made straight unless the board has 3+ connected cards. How to play it Pocket pairs aim to hit a set (about 12% of flops).