Poker is a game that seems to have been around forever in the gambling world, but not everyone is familiar with the poker hand rankings. For you to be a pro at the game of poker, the first thing you need to do is memorise poker hands.
If you are interested in starting your poker gaming adventure, keep reading to see the full list of poker hands and what beats what.
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Of course, the traditional poker hand rankings are where you need to begin with. It is used to classify the strength of each card and the different types of card hands you can have. The best news here is that the winning poker hands tend to be the same among the vast majority of online poker games you can find with casino operators.
Let’s start with what royal flush beats. It is a hand that is known as being the best possible straight flush.
This hand is sure to get you excited when you get it, and it consists of an ace, king, queen, jack, and a ten of a suit. The most important thing you need to remember here, this is an unbeatable hand.
Up next, we have the straight flush, which consists of five sequentially valued cards in the same suit but is not a royal flush.
Here, you need to know that a straight flush beats anything but royal flush or any straight flush that has higher-ranking hands.
According to some cheat sheet estimations, a straight flush is a hand that is not so likely to be drawn, as there is just a 0.014% chance of a player getting it.
Four of a kind is the next hand we have in our poker hand ranking chart. This hand is also known as “quads,” and the logic behind it is very simple – it contains four hands of the same rank and another rank.
That extra card from another rank is known as the kicker. As for how this hand ranks when playing poker, it is just below a straight flush, and above a full house.
We continue our poker hand rankings with a full house, which is when you get three cards of the same rank with another two of a different, but matching rank.
Should a tie occur, then the highest three matching cards will be victorious. Moreover, a full house is the third-best poker hand at a poker table.
Only a straight flush and a four-of-a-kind can beat a full house. Therefore, it is one of the strongest hands that you can get, as a full house beats almost any other hand.
Up next is the flush, which is a poker hand that has five-of-the same suit, though not all need to be of sequential rank.
The most general meaning of the name “flush” is fullness, and there are also similar meanings of words in different languages. A flush ranks just below a full house and above a straight
A straight in poker is when you have 5 cards, but they all need to be in consecutive ranks. An example here would be 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.
Moreover, remember that aces here can be both high and low when making a winning poker hand. However, the ace needs to be either at the beginning or at the end of the poker hand you have.
Three-of-a-kind is a hand in poker that is also known as “trips” or a “set.” It is a hand that has three cards of one rank and another two cards of two other hands; the latter are also known as kickers.
As for the poker hand rankings of three of a kind, it is a hand that ranks above two pair and just above a straight.
When you get a two-pair hand in poker, it means that you have landed two cards of one rank, two of another, and one of a third card, which is the kicker.
A two-pair hand will rank just below three of a kind and above one pair. If you wonder who wins if two players have the same poker hand of two pair, then the hand with the superior higher pair will win.
This is a rare case that there are identical two-pair hands in the same poker round, but if it occurs, the punter with the superior kicker hand will win.
A pair is also known as one pair in poker. It is a hand that just has two cards of one rank and three of three other ranks—the kickers.
If you have a one-pair hand in a poker game, it means that you will rank below two pairs, and one pair beats a high card hand.
One pair is near the bottom in poker hand rankings, with the best pair hand you can get being Aces and Kings, with an Ace-high kicker.
Finally, we have the high card, which is our list of poker hands. It is simply a five-card hand, all with different suits and no matching ranks. The best high card you can get is Ace-high, with the lowest being 9-high.
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New players who play poker at online gambling sites may struggle at first to remember the best poker hands.
Of course, the aim of poker is to have the best five-card hand at the end. You also need to remember that you can win without showing your hands, but you can only do so if you force someone to fold before the river.
However, for the sake of this article, we will provide you with an overview of what beats what in poker.
As mentioned above, first we have the high card, which is the weakest possible hand you can have in poker. It doesn’t mean that you cannot win with this hand, but at a poker table that has several players, the odds of it happening are quite low.
The name of the hand says it all—you don’t even have a pair here. Instead, you are using the highest of the five cards you are holding.
So, to answer the question how many poker hands are ranked above high card – pretty much all the others.
Up next, we have the one-pair poker hand, which is one of the most common ones in Texas Hold’em Poker. This is a hand that can surely win you plenty of rounds.
Logically, one place higher in the poker hand rankings is the two pair, and it, of course, beats the previously mentioned hands when you play poker.
Now, it is time to get familiar with a few better poker hands. Of course, we will begin with three of a kind, which is sometimes called a trip or a set.
You are much more likely to win the game with a three-of-a-kind than with any of the previously mentioned poker hands.
Continuing here, to beat a three-of-a-kind poker hand, you will need to get straight. A straight is when you get five consecutive cards, but at least one of them is not of the same suit as the others.
Keep in mind that if a punter had a seven-high straight, then they would be the winner. Moreover, there are two straight-hand nicknames that you need to know:
Moving on, a flush beats a straight, and it is a very powerful poker hand you can bet. It can only be beaten by a handful of other poker hands.
Any poker hand that contains 5 cards of the same suit can be considered a flush. When it comes to flushes, aces are always the high cards.
As already briefly mentioned, there are just a handful of cards that can beat a flush—a full house beats a flush.
It is also known as a “Boat”, so a full house is when you have five cards containing three of a kind and an additional pair.
Finally, in full house card rankings, the better three-of-a-kind combination will determine the winner.
The following three hands are the best in our poker hand rankings:
You would be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed by the numbers you see in poker odds charts. When you first get a glance at poker percentages, probabilities, and various other equations, you might wonder where they even come from.
In this part of the article, we will discuss some of the common probability principles in poker games and how they are used, so you have no problem calculating a hand’s probability before the flop.
There are 52 cards in total in one card deck. The probability of getting a random card is 1/52. The probability of hitting a specific card is 4/52, as there are 4 of the same cards in each deck. Finally, the probability of getting any two-pair suit is 13/52.
Now, let’s say that you get a specific card and you want to be dealt another one of the same value and you want a pair. Here, the probability of getting another of the same card is 3/51, as now there are 51 cards left and just 3 of the ones that you seek.
If you want to know the probability of getting two specific cards, a king and a queen, as an example, it’s 1/2652. Getting a king first has a probability of 1/52, and getting a queen next has a probability of 1/51. The order of cards is irrelevant, so we multiply the odds by 2, which results in 1/1326.
The probability of getting K and Q without caring about the suit is: 4/52 x 5/51 = 1/166. As is the case above, this is a calculation of the probability of getting two cards in one order, but we don’t care about the order, so to calculate the probability, you can multiply 1/166 x 2 = 1/83.
We have already covered some of the most common concepts and the main probabilities of getting some poker hands, but what about the exact odds of getting a royal flush, two pairs, or any of the above-mentioned poker hand variations? Let’s take a closer look at what you can use as a cheat sheet in poker.
Let’s start with your chance of getting a royal flush in your poker hand. The odds of getting a royal flush are the number of royal flushes divided by the number of poker hands.
As you would imagine, the chance of getting a royal flush is not very high. You have a 0.00015% chance of getting an ace, king, queen, or jack in your poker hand. A royal flush beats all other hands in poker.
Up next in the poker hand rankings, we have a straight flush. The best straight flush is a nine, ten, jack, queen, and king, all of the same suit.
As mentioned above, an ace can be a low or a high card here, depending on the combination you have.
This means that there can be nine straight flush hands in the same suit. Given that there are four different suits, the number of straight flushes is 36 (4 x 9 = 36). The odds of getting a straight flush in a poker hand are 0.0014%.
Four-of-a-kind in poker is a very strong hand. As seen above, it beats all other poker hands except the straight flush and the royal flush.
As such, the odds of getting four of a kind in Texas Hold’em stand at 0.256%, which is slightly better than the above-mentioned combinations.
A full house beats a flush, straight, three-of-a-kind, two pairs, one pair, and a high card. So, to put it in the simplest terms, the odds of getting a full house at the beginning of the poker hand are 0.1441%.
This is because there are 2,598,960 poker hands that you can get in Texas Hold’em, but only 3,744 of them are full houses.
Now we can get to calculating the odds of getting a flush. A flush consists of any five cards of the same suit that are not consecutive.
The odds of getting a flush in poker are 0.1956%, which stands at around 1/509. This would mean that one of every 509 hands in poker is a flush.
A straight in poker is a very simple poker hand: you need to get five cards in a sequence, with aces being low or high. Cards are also allowed to be of the same suit or from different ones.
As such, the probability of getting a straight is 0.003940%, but if you exclude straight and royal flushes, the chance goes to 0.00392465%
Getting three of a kind in poker is one of the best hand combinations you can get, and it will usually secure you a nice win.
There are 858 different ways you can draw three of a kind, not counting different suits. So, the odds of you landing a three-of-a-kind poker hand are 2.1128%, which is better than the above-mentioned combinations.
The logic behind a two-pair poker hand is very simple: this hand has a pattern consisting of AABBC, where A, B, and C are different kinds.
Finally, the probability of getting a two-pair hand combination in the poker hands ranking chart is 4.7539%.
As for getting one pair in poker, there are 2,860 different ways you can draw that specific poker hand, not counting different suits.
This would mean that the probability of you landing a pair in poker is 42,2569%. A pair beats only a high-card poker hand combination.
A high card is also known as a no-pair poker hand. You can expect 1.277 different ways you can draw a high card in poker, and the odds of it are quite good – 50.1177%.
Of course, a high card is the weakest poker hand you can land, but that doesn’t mean you cannot emerge victorious, depending on your strategy and the other players’ hands.
It is fundamental for any poker player to understand the concept of the absolute and relative value of a poker hand. If you know this, you will surely be better at understanding the game of poker, thus making much better decisions during your gameplay.
You need to know exactly what a flush is, when a full house is possible, and so on. You can do this with some easy memorisation of the possible hands in poker. This is absolute hand strength explained very briefly.
However, making decisions based only on this is not recommended and is incomplete. You need to consider the strength of your opponent’s hand and measure it against yours. This is the next level of thinking in poker, and it is called relative hand strength.
To put it simply, the value of every hand in poker depends on the value of your opponent’s hand, or their range of hands, to be more specific. Moreover, another way you can see the relative strength of your poker hand is by seeing what the community cards are when they are dealt.
Strong in showdownStrong starting position
May become overconfidentBetter evaluation of the situationPromotes unbiased thinking You may underestimate the value of your handYou should already know what beats what in poker, as we have completed an overview of the best and worst hands you can get when playing online poker. You can use those hand rankings to see what you can use whenever you decide to have a go at any popular poker variant.
It doesn’t matter whether you decide to play at your local casino, an online gambling site, or at home with your friends; you need to learn the value of poker hands and their order from best to worst. This is where our list comes in handy, so you know exactly which hand is better in the game.
It should be easy for you to memorize the hands ranking list in poker we have already explained. If it is easier for you to memorise it by printing it, then do so. By knowing each detail in poker, you have a much bigger chance of securing wins.
This is arguably the most commonly asked question in the poker community. Everyone just wants to know what the best hand in the game is, and as explained above, the royal flush is the highest possible poker hand you can get.
Of course, it consists of an ace, king, queen, jack, and ten, all of which need to be of the same suit. All suits in a game of poker are equal, so all royal flushes are equal. However, the odds of getting a royal flush when playing poker are not very high, but the winning potential is amazing, should you land one.
Another question commonly asked by poker players all around the world is: what is the best suit in poker?
You already know that there are 52 cards in a deck, and they are all divided into four sites of 13 ranks each. The most important thing to note here is that all suits are of equal value, so no suit is higher than any other one.
In a game of poker, the Ace comes as the highest card, and the 2 card is the lowest. However, as mentioned above, the ace can also be a low card, when needed in an order of ace to five, or it can be a high card.
Finally, we have a question that some people may find intriguing – how many hands are there in poker?
You better prepare, as you might be surprised to see the answer to this question. There are 2,598,960 total hands in poker. There are 52 cards in a deck, hence the number of total poker hands.
Poker is one of the oldest gambling games in the world, and it will surely remain that way for a very long time.
It seems like there is no one in the world who hasn’t tried playing poker at least once in their lifetime, which just sums up its popularity.
However, as poker is considered a game of skill, you need to be prepared when deciding to play it, especially when you wager real money on an online casino site.
Poker is not like a slot machine, where you just rely on luck and hope for the best. Here, there are plenty of aspects that you need to memorise, such as the standard poker hand rankings.
In that line, we are a team of experts in the poker industry, and we tend to think like players first, so we know exactly what newbies in the industry would look for.
Take a look at all the aspects we have mentioned about poker, such as hand rankings, odds of getting a specific hand, etc., so when you finally decide to wager real money in the game, you are well-prepared.
All of the most relevant gambling sites in the world have different variations of poker, so you will not be short of options whenever you are prepared for a poker game.
Now that we have covered all important aspects of the game, it is time to take a look at some of the poker hand rankings FAQ, so you have a bit of a shortcut if you are looking for a specific aspect of the article.
After going through several successful experiences with several industry pioneers, Fadi Hayek has managed to excel in the world of content for online gaming by providing unique content for several projects that allowed him to obtain the necessary experience to launch his career. Last but not least, Fadi also holds several certificates, including but not limited to content marketing and iGaming.
