How the ranking works
Rarity sets the order, and nothing else does. Every one of the ten hands is ranked by how many ways it can be dealt from a 52-card deck.
A five-card deal produces 2,598,960 hands. Of those, 4 are royal flushes and 1,302,540 are high card. That ratio is the whole rule: the fewer ways a hand can be made, the higher it sits.
This explains the two rankings beginners misread most. A flush looks harder to build than a full house, but five-card deals hold 5,108 flushes against 3,744 full houses, so the full house wins. A straight looks harder than a flush, yet straights come up 10,200 ways against 5,108, so the flush wins.
What beats what in poker
The ladder runs in one direction. Any hand beats every hand below it, and the comparison never depends on suit.
Does a flush beat a straight?
Yes. A flush is exactly twice as rare: 5,108 combinations against 10,200 in a five-card deal. This is the matchup players ask about most, because a straight needs five cards in exact sequence and feels like the harder hand to make.
Does a full house beat a flush?
Yes. A flush does not beat a full house, even though five cards of one suit look like the harder build. The margin is the narrowest on the whole ladder: 3,744 full houses against 5,108 flushes, so a flush lands only 1.36 times as often.
Does a full house beat a straight?
Yes, comfortably. A straight sits two places lower and comes up 10,200 ways against 3,744, close to three times as often.
Does a straight beat a full house?
No, and this is the same matchup read from the other side. The straight is the more common hand of the two, so it ranks below. A straight only wins here if the full house is not actually there.
Does a straight beat two pair?
Yes. Two pair is more than twelve times as common: 123,552 combinations against 10,200. Three of a kind loses to a straight for the same reason.
Does three of a kind beat two pair?
Yes. Three of a kind comes up 54,912 ways, two pair 123,552. Trips are rarer, so they rank higher.
Do quads beat a full house?
Yes, and by a clear margin. Four of a kind is exactly six times rarer: 624 combinations against 3,744.
Does a straight flush beat four of a kind?
Yes. A straight flush is made 36 ways against 624, making it about 17 times rarer than quads.
Does a royal flush beat four aces?
Yes. Four aces is the strongest four of a kind, but it still loses to any straight flush. Even the lowest one, A-2-3-4-5 in a single suit, beats it. That hand is called the steel wheel.
How rare each hand is
There are two honest ways to count, and they give different answers.
The five-card count is what sets the ranking. It asks how many ways a hand can be dealt from 52 cards, out of 2,598,960.
The seven-card count is what happens at the table. In Texas Hold’em the best five cards are chosen from seven, out of 133,784,560 combinations, so every hand lands more often:
- A full house is 1 in 694 as a five-card deal, but about 1 in 39 hands to the river.
- A flush is 1 in 509 against roughly 1 in 33.
- Four of a kind is 1 in 4,165 against about 1 in 595.
- A royal flush is 1 in 649,740 against about 1 in 30,940.
The ranking does not change between the two counts. Rarity moves for every hand at once, so the order holds.
One pair is the exception worth knowing. In a five-card deal high card is the most common outcome at 50.1%, ahead of one pair at 42.3%. Out of seven cards, one pair takes the lead at 43.8%, because pairing a card becomes easy. In Hold’em, most pots are decided by one pair.
Poker hand rankings cheat sheet
The table above prints as a one-page cheat sheet. Use the download button to get all ten hands, their examples and their odds on a single sheet, with no account and no watermark.
Where this ranking does not apply
Two families of games change the rules.
Short-deck Hold’em removes the deuces through the fives, leaving 36 cards. Flushes get harder to make than full houses, so a flush is promoted above a full house.
Lowball games invert the ranking. In razz and 2-7 draw the weakest hand takes the pot, which turns high card into the hand to aim for.
Everywhere else — Texas Hold’em, Omaha, five-card draw, seven-card stud — the ten hands on this page rank in exactly this order.