Poker Hands Ranked: All 10 Hands in Order, With Odds

Poker hands fall into ten ranks, and any hand from a higher rank beats every hand from a lower one at the showdown (the moment the players still in the pot turn their cards over). The royal flush sits at the top and high card at the bottom, and the order follows rarity: only 4 of the 2,598,960 possible five-card hands are royal flushes, against 1,302,540 high-card hands.

That order settles the pot in Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Seven Card Stud and Five Card Draw. Three Card Poker, Short Deck and Razz are among the exceptions.

Poker Hands Ranked From Best to Worst

The royal flush ranks first, then the straight flush and four of a kind. A full house beats a flush, a flush beats a straight, and below the straight come three of a kind, two pair, one pair and, last of all, high card. Strictly there are nine categories, because a royal flush is the highest straight flush, so you’ll also see the list given as nine.

The combinations column explains the order. A straight beats three of a kind because a deck holds 10,200 straights and 54,912 three-of-a-kind hands, which makes the straight more than five times rarer. The straight flush count leaves out the 4 royal flushes, and the straight count leaves out all 40 straight flushes.

What Each Hand Needs, and Who Wins When Two Players Hold It

Each hand has its own tie rule, and that rule decides the pot when two players hold the same hand.

Royal Flush

A royal flush is A-K-Q-J-10 all in one suit, and there are only four of them, one per suit. Suits carry no rank, so two royal flushes split the pot. In Texas Hold’em that can only happen when the five community cards (the shared cards dealt face up in the middle) form the royal flush themselves.

Straight Flush

A straight flush runs five cards in sequence, all in one suit, such as 8-7-6-5-4 of clubs. The higher top card wins, so a 9-high straight flush beats an 8-high one. The lowest is 5-4-3-2-A of one suit, called the steel wheel, where the ace counts as a one.

Four of a Kind

Quads, the short name for this hand, means four cards of one rank plus a fifth card. Higher quads beat lower quads, so four jacks beat four sevens. If all four sit on the board in Hold’em, every player has them, and the kicker (the best card outside the main combination) decides the pot.

Full House

A full house is three cards of one rank with a pair of another, named by the three first: 10-10-10-4-4 is tens full of fours. The three of a kind is compared first, so 5-5-5-2-2 beats 4-4-4-A-A. The pair only matters when the three-card part ties, which needs community cards.

Flush

A flush is five cards of one suit that don’t run in sequence, for example K-10-7-6-2 of hearts. Two flushes are compared from the top card down, one card at a time, so K-10-7-6-2 beats K-10-7-5-4 on the fourth card. Any flush beats any straight.

Straight

A straight is five cards in sequence in mixed suits. The lowest is 5-4-3-2-A (the wheel) and the highest is A-K-Q-J-10 (Broadway). The higher top card wins, and the ace is the only card that plays at either end. A run can’t wrap round the corner, so Q-K-A-2-3 is not a straight.

Three of a Kind

Three of a kind is three cards of one rank plus two cards of different ranks. Hold’em players call it a set when a pocket pair (two matching cards in your hand) meets a third on the board, and trips when one of your cards matches a pair on the board. Higher ranks win, then the two kickers in order.

Two Pair

Two pair is two different pairs plus a fifth card. The higher pair is compared first, then the lower pair, then the fifth card, so Q-Q-5-5-9 beats J-J-10-10-A: the queens settle it before the ace is ever looked at.

One Pair

One pair is two cards of one rank with three kickers. When two players hold the same pair, the kickers are compared from the highest down, so 3-3-A-J-8 beats 3-3-A-J-7.

High Card

High card is any hand that makes none of the nine combinations above, and it takes its name from its top card: A-Q-9-6-3 in mixed suits is ace-high. Ties compare all five cards in order. The weakest five-card hand in poker is 7-5-4-3-2 in mixed suits, because 6-5-4-3-2 and 5-4-3-2-A are both straights.

What Beats What: The Matchups Players Get Wrong

A higher-ranked hand wins every time, whatever the card values inside it. A 5-high straight beats three aces, and threes and twos (two pair) beat a pair of aces. These are the matchups that start arguments, with the five-card counts that settle them.

How Ties Are Broken: Kickers, Suits and Split Pots

Ties go to the better cards inside the combination first, then to the kickers, and when all five cards match in rank the pot is split equally.

Only five cards ever count. You see seven in Hold’em, but a sixth or seventh card never breaks a tie, even when it’s an ace.

Suits never rank at a standard showdown, so two ace-high flushes with the same card values split the pot whatever their suits. Seven Card Stud uses suit order (clubs lowest, then diamonds, hearts and spades) to decide who pays the bring-in (the forced opening bet) when two up-cards match, never to settle the pot.

The ace is the highest card in every hand except the wheel, where it plays as a one. That makes A-K-Q-J-9 the best high-card hand and 5-4-3-2-A the lowest straight.

Reading Your Best Five Cards in Texas Hold’em

In Texas Hold’em your hand is the best five cards from seven: your two hole cards (dealt face down to you) and the five community cards. You can use both hole cards, one of them or neither, and that last option produces the results that catch new players out.

Each of these six showdowns uses mixed suits unless a suit is named.

The first row is the one that starts arguments. Your pocket sevens look like a third pair, but there’s no such hand as three pair: your best five cards are the kings, the nines and one more card, and the opponent’s ace outranks your seven. Players call this being counterfeited.

In the second row the board’s straight beats your three kings, everyone still in the hand holds the same five cards, and the pot is split. Nobody can top that board, because with no pair and no three cards of one suit showing, neither a full house nor a flush is possible.

Omaha keeps the same ranking but changes how you build the hand: you must use exactly two of your four hole cards with exactly three community cards. On a board of A, 10, 7 and 4 of spades plus the 2 of diamonds, a Hold’em player holding the king of spades has an ace-high flush. In Omaha, K-Q-J-9 with only the king in spades makes no flush at all and plays as ace-high, because one spade in your hand is one short.

The betting rounds that lead to the showdown are set out in our guide on how to play poker, and the types of poker page compares Omaha, Stud and Draw in full. Once the order is second nature, our pages on the best UK poker sites and low stakes poker sites compare UK-licensed rooms to play at.

Poker Hand Odds: Five Cards v Seven Cards

The chance of a royal flush is 1 in 649,740 when you’re dealt five cards, and 1 in 30,940 when you see seven, as in Texas Hold’em played to the river. Counting every combination, 2,598,960 five-card hands and 133,784,560 seven-card hands, gives these figures for each rank.

Seeing seven cards makes every strong hand more likely, and it flips the bottom of the table. In Hold’em you finish with one pair (43.8%) or two pair (23.5%) more often than with nothing at all (17.4%), yet high card still ranks last. The ranking is fixed by five-card rarity and is never re-sorted for seven-card games.

The seven-card figures count every hand the board helps to make, including boards that hand the same straight or flush to everyone, so they overstate how often a hand is yours alone.

Casino Poker Games: Where the Ranking Sets the Payout

In casino poker games you play against a paytable (the list of what each hand pays) rather than other players, and the paytable follows the poker ranking even where the odds don’t. Jacks or Better, the most common video poker game, shows it clearly. The table sets the full-pay 9/6 version’s payouts next to how often each hand lands after the draw with optimal strategy (the holds that return the most over time), using the Wizard of Odds figures.

Look at the full house, flush and straight rows. Played that way, you finish with a full house more often than with a straight or a flush, but the full house still pays 9 against 4 and 6. The game pays by the poker order, not by how often each hand turns up.

Paytables show the total paid back for each coin, so a pair of jacks returns your stake and nothing more. The 9/6 name comes from the full house and flush payouts: that version returns 99.54% with optimal strategy, while an 8/5 table, paying 8 for a full house and 5 for a flush, returns 97.30%. The royal flush pays 800 per coin only on the maximum bet (usually five coins), so check the paytable on the game screen before you choose a stake.

The 0.46% gap below 100% on the 9/6 table is the house edge, which our guide to how house edge works explains.

Live tables work the same way. Casino Hold’em, which Evolution runs as a live dealer game, puts you against the dealer, who needs a pair of fours or better to qualify under the standard rules. Its common AnteWin table pays by rank as well: 100 to 1 for a royal flush, 20 to 1 for a straight flush, 3 to 1 for a full house and even money for a straight or lower. Evolution lists payouts of up to 100 to 1 for its version, and our casino table games guide and live dealer casinos page cover where to find these games.

Games Where the Hand Ranking Changes

Five formats change the standard order, mostly because a smaller hand or a smaller deck changes which hands are rare. Deuces Wild video poker changes it through the paytable instead.

Poker Hand Nicknames

Players use nicknames for several hands, and these are the ones you’ll hear at a table or on a stream.

The Dead Man’s Hand is tied to Wild Bill Hickok, shot dead while playing poker in a Deadwood saloon, Dakota Territory, on 2 August 1876. No record from the time lists his cards. The aces-and-eights version took hold after Frank J. Wilstach’s 1926 biography, and the fifth card is still unknown. Hickok’s place in the game’s history comes up in our best poker players guide.

FAQs

How Many Poker Hands Are There?

Poker has ten named hands, or nine categories if you count the royal flush as a straight flush. A 52-card deck deals 2,598,960 different five-card hands, and once suits are set aside they reduce to 7,462 distinct hand values, from the royal flush down to 7-5-4-3-2.

What Is the Best Starting Hand in Texas Hold’em?

Pocket aces (A-A) are the strongest two cards you can be dealt in Hold’em, ahead of pocket kings. Which starting hands to play from each seat is a strategy question, covered in the starting-hand section of our poker guide.

18+. Gamble responsibly: gambleaware.org