Poker Hand Rankings
Ten five-card hands decide every showdown, and the order runs from the royal flush at the top down to high card at the bottom. The same poker hand rankings apply at Hold’em, Omaha, Stud and Draw tables. What changes between those games is how many cards you build a hand from and how many of them you are allowed to use.
This page is a plain reference you can keep open mid-session. Every poker hands ranking chart lists these ten in the same order, so once you know it you know it. Each entry below carries a one-line definition and the number of combinations it accounts for out of the 2,598,960 possible five-card hands in a 52-card deck. The counts are the standard deck figures, unrounded. For draw probabilities rather than ranking order, the odds calculator does that job better than a table.
Poker Hand Rankings: Best to Worst
- Royal flush: A-K-Q-J-10 with all five cards in one suit. 4 combinations.
- Straight flush: five cards in sequence in one suit, short of the ace-high version. 36 combinations.
- Four of a kind: four cards of the same rank plus any fifth card. 624 combinations.
- Full house: three of a kind plus one pair. 3,744 combinations.
- Flush: five cards of one suit that are not in sequence. 5,108 combinations.
- Straight: five cards in sequence across mixed suits. 10,200 combinations.
- Three of a kind: three cards of one rank with two unrelated cards alongside. 54,912 combinations.
- Two pair: two cards of one rank, two of another, plus a fifth card. 123,552 combinations.
- One pair: two cards of one rank with three unrelated cards. 1,098,240 combinations.
- High card: no pair and no sequence, ranked by the single highest card. 1,302,540 combinations.
How Often Each Hand Shows Up
The ten counts add up to exactly 2,598,960, so nothing is missing from the list. Four of a kind turns up 624 times against 3,744 full houses, which makes quads six times rarer than a full house. Divide 2,598,960 by the 4 royal flush combinations and you get one royal in every 649,740 five-card deals. Widen that to every straight flush by adding the 36 plain ones to the 4 royals, and the figure lands on 40 hands, or one in 64,974.
The bottom of the table dominates the deck. One pair covers 1,098,240 hands and high card another 1,302,540, which comes to 2,400,780 of the 2,598,960. The middle is tighter than it looks: 10,200 straights against 5,108 flushes means a straight is roughly twice as common as a flush, which is why the flush sits above it in the poker hand rankings.
When Hands Tie: Kickers and Split Pots
Suits have no rank in standard poker. Two hands with the same category and the same card values are equal, and the pot is split between them. Where the category matches but the cards do not, the kicker decides, and the kicker is whatever sits outside the matched pair, two pairs or three of a kind. Our Texas Hold’em rules page covers how that plays out over the betting rounds.
In the first example, you hold K-K-A-7-4 and your opponent holds K-K-Q-J-9. You both have one pair, kings, so the pair itself proves nothing. Your ace outranks their queen, and the hand goes to you on the kicker.
In the second example, the board reads A-K-Q-J-10 in mixed suits and neither player holds a card that improves on it. Both players play the board’s straight, the fifth card in each hand stops mattering, and the chips come back split.
The Ace Counts as High or Low
The ace can play high as part of A-K-Q-J-10, and that sequence is the highest straight in the game. It can also sit at the bottom, where 5-4-3-2-A is the lowest straight on the list. Read the ace as a 1 in that second sequence and it becomes 5-4-3-2-1, which is why the wheel gets beaten by every other straight at the table.
Outside straights the ace stays the strongest single card. An ace kicker beats a king kicker, and an ace-high hand beats a king-high. Nothing in the ranking order changes because of it, but plenty of pots turn on it.
What Changes Between Hold’em, Omaha and Draw
Hold’em hands you seven cards and lets you use any five of them, so the winning hand is the best five-card poker hand ranking you can assemble from two hole cards and five community cards. Omaha looks similar at a glance and plays nothing like it: you must use exactly two of your four hole cards and exactly three from the board, so a paired board does not automatically pair you.
Five-card Draw and Stud keep the same ranking order. Draw starts you with five cards and lets you swap some of them. Stud deals a mix of face-up and face-down cards and builds to five with no shared board. If you are new to either, the how to play poker guide covers table flow, and the poker section collects the rest of our material.
Questions Players Ask
Does a Flush Beat a Straight?
Yes: a flush covers 5,108 five-card combinations and a straight 10,200, and the smaller count takes the pot. Five cards of one suit that are not in sequence beat any straight, and lose to a full house at 3,744.
Do Suits Matter in Poker?
They matter for building a flush or a straight flush and for nothing else in the rankings. Clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades carry equal weight, so two players holding the same card values split the pot whatever their suits happen to be.
What Beats a Full House?
Three hands sit above it: four of a kind at 624 combinations, a straight flush at 36, and a royal flush at 4. Everything below loses to it, including a flush, a straight and three of a kind. When you want to know how often a full house survives against a flush draw with two cards to come, the odds calculator will run the numbers.