Poker hand rankings in Texas Hold’em, strongest to weakest

Poker hand rankings are the fixed order of the ten five-card hands, from the royal flush at the top to a lone high card at the bottom. At showdown the higher-ranked hand wins the pot. The order follows how hard each hand is to make: in Texas Hold’em you will end up with a royal flush about once in 31,000 deals and a full house about once in 38, so the royal flush ranks far above the full house.

Poker hands from strongest to weakest

The last column is how often your best five cards make that hand by the river in Texas Hold’em, with seven cards to choose from. One line looks wrong and is worth understanding: you finish with only a high card less often than with one pair or two pair. The next section explains why that does not change the order.

Why the hands rank in this order

The order was set for games where each player gets exactly five cards, such as five-card draw and stud. With five cards, every hand in the list is rarer than the one below it. Out of 2,598,960 possible five-card hands, only 4 are royal flushes, 3,744 are full houses and more than 1.3 million are high-card hands. A hand that can be made in fewer ways beats a hand that can be made in more ways.

Hold’em gives you seven cards and lets you pick the best five, which makes pairs much easier to find. You end with high card only when all seven cards miss each other, which happens about 17% of the time, against 44% for one pair. The ranking still holds, because it is a rule about five-card hands, and a pair of twos still beats ace-high. Every other hand keeps the same order in Hold’em as in five-card poker.

Suits never break a tie. A flush in spades is exactly as strong as a flush in hearts, and two identical hands split the pot. Our guide to poker odds and probabilities goes further into the numbers.

How you make a hand in Texas Hold’em

You get two hole cards, and five community cards are dealt to the middle. Your hand is the best five-card combination from those seven, using both of your hole cards, one of them or none. When the board itself is your best hand, you are “playing the board”, and everyone still in the pot who cannot beat it splits it.

Say you hold J♠ T♠ and the board comes Q♠ 9♠ 4♦ K♥ 2♣. Your best five cards are K♥ Q♠ J♠ T♠ 9♠, a king-high straight that uses both hole cards. You also have four spades, but a flush needs five, so it does not count.

Omaha uses the same ranking with a stricter rule: you must use exactly two of your four hole cards and exactly three from the board. With four hearts on the board and one heart in your hand, you do not have a flush. See the Omaha rules for more.

The ten hands explained

Royal flush

The five highest cards of one suit: A♥ K♥ Q♥ J♥ T♥. It is the top straight flush and cannot be beaten. Only four exist, one per suit, so two players can only share one when it is on the board. More in our guide to the royal flush.

Straight flush

Five cards in sequence and of the same suit, such as 9♣ 8♣ 7♣ 6♣ 5♣. The higher top card wins, and the lowest straight flush is 5♦ 4♦ 3♦ 2♦ A♦, where the ace plays low. More on the straight flush.

Four of a kind

All four cards of one rank plus any fifth card, such as 7♠ 7♥ 7♦ 7♣ A♠. Also called quads. Higher quads win; when four of a kind is on the board, the fifth card, the kicker, decides. See four of a kind.

Full house

Three of a kind plus a pair, such as K♠ K♦ K♣ 4♥ 4♠, called “kings full of fours”. Between two full houses the higher three of a kind wins, so T♠ T♥ T♦ 2♣ 2♠ beats 9♠ 9♥ 9♦ K♣ K♠. More on the full house.

Flush

Any five cards of one suit, not in sequence, such as A♣ J♣ 8♣ 6♣ 2♣. Compare the highest card first, then the next, down to the fifth. Learn more about the flush.

Straight

Five cards in sequence of mixed suits, such as 9♦ 8♠ 7♥ 6♣ 5♦. The top straight is A♦ K♣ Q♥ J♠ T♦, called Broadway, and the lowest is 5♠ 4♥ 3♦ 2♣ A♥, the wheel. A straight cannot wrap around: K-A-2-3-4 is not a straight. More on the straight and the ace-high straight.

Three of a kind

Three cards of one rank plus two unrelated cards, such as 8♠ 8♥ 8♦ K♣ 3♠. In Hold’em, a pocket pair plus one matching board card is a set; one hole card plus a pair on the board is trips. A set is harder for opponents to spot. See our guide to the set.

Two pair

Two cards of one rank, two of another and a kicker, such as J♠ J♥ 5♦ 5♣ A♠. Compare the higher pair first, then the lower pair, then the kicker. There is no “three pair”: with three pairs among your seven cards, only the best two play.

One pair

Two cards of the same rank and three side cards, such as Q♠ Q♥ 9♦ 6♣ 2♥. With the same pair, the side cards decide, one at a time from the highest.

High card

No pair and no other combination, such as A♦ Q♣ 9♠ 6♥ 3♣. The hand is ranked by its highest card, then the next. The weakest possible hand is 7-5-4-3-2 of mixed suits.

What beats what: a quick lookup

Within the same hand type, the higher version wins, as the next section shows.

How ties are broken

When two players have the same type of hand, compare the cards that make the hand first, then the unused side cards, called kickers. Only five cards ever play, so a sixth card never breaks a tie.

The flush row comes from a real Hold’em board, K♦ 9♦ 6♦ 4♣ 2♠: a player holding A♦ 3♦ beats one holding Q♦ J♦, because the ace outranks the king at the top of the hand.

Your chances of making each hand from your starting cards

The overall frequencies above mix every starting hand together. What you hold before the flop changes the picture a lot, so here are the numbers for the common types of hands. They are exact counts over every possible flop and every possible five-card board.

With a pocket pair

With two suited cards

With connected cards

With any two unpaired cards

The flush and straight numbers count only flushes in your own suit and straights that your hand completes. Connected cards make more straights than gapped ones: 8-7 makes a straight by the river 9.3% of the time, K-9 only about 4%.

Rank is fixed, value is not: the nuts

The ranking never changes, but how good your hand is depends on the board. The best possible hand on a given board is called the nuts, and checking what it is on every street is a basic habit.

On K♥ Q♥ 7♣ 4♥ 2♠ the board is unpaired and no straight flush is possible, so the nuts is any ace-high heart flush, such as A♥ 5♥. Change the river to 7♦, making K♥ Q♥ 7♣ 4♥ 7♦, and the same flush is no longer close to the nuts: full houses such as K-7 and 7-4 beat it now, and the nuts is four sevens with 7♠ 7♥. Our guide on how to read the board covers this street by street.

Do rankings change in other games?

The order above is used in Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Seven-Card Stud and five-card draw. A few games change it:

• Short Deck (6+ Hold’em) removes the 2s to 5s, which makes flushes harder to make, so a flush beats a full house. Some games also rank three of a kind above a straight, so check the rules where you play. More in our Short Deck guide.
• Lowball games such as Razz and Badugi reward the lowest hand instead. See lowball poker and Badugi.
• Hi-lo games split the pot between the best high hand and the best qualifying low hand. See hi-lo hands.

Poker hand rankings FAQ

Next, learn how a hand plays out in our guide to the Texas Hold’em rules, and which hands are worth playing in preflop hand selection.