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Four of a kind is higher. Quads are the third-strongest hand in poker and a flush is the fifth, with a full house sitting between them, so four of a kind wins and the size of the flush makes no difference — the nut flush loses to four twos. The frequencies are further apart than the ranking suggests: a flush turns up about once in 33 hands and four of a kind about once in 595, roughly eighteen times rarer. Compare them in the tool below.
The answer, and the two classes that separate these hands
How a paired suited board produces both hands at once
Why an ace-high flush is no safer than any other one here
What beats what
Rank 3 of 10
Four cards of one rank
Rank 5 of 10
Any five, same suit
Four of a Kind beats Flush. The stronger hand class always wins, whatever the cards inside it are.
Two places apart, with the full house between them. The percentages are how often each is the best five-card hand available from seven cards.
#
3
Hand
Four of a kind
Example
Q♠ Q♥ Q♦ Q♣ 7♠
How often
0.168%
Against the other
Wins
#
4
Hand
Full house
Example
J♠ J♥ J♦ 4♠ 4♣
How often
2.60%
Against the other
—
#
5
Hand
Flush
Example
A♦ J♦ 8♦ 5♦ 3♦
How often
3.03%
Against the other
Loses
A flush needs three cards of one suit; quads need a pair on the board or a pocket pair that hits. Both conditions together are what makes this matchup rare and expensive.
Board
K♦ 9♦ 9♥ 4♦ 2♦
The flush
Any single diamond
The quads
Pocket nines
How it plays
Four diamonds showing — the flush bets, the quads raise
Board
8♠ 8♥ 8♦ 5♠ 2♠
The flush
Two spades in hand
The quads
The fourth eight, or any pocket pair
How it plays
Trips on board make the flush look like the nuts
Board
Q♥ J♥ 6♥ 6♠ 6♦
The flush
Two hearts in hand
The quads
The fourth six
How it plays
The flush arrived first and never gets to fold
Board
7♣ 7♦ 7♥ 7♠ A♣
The flush
Irrelevant
The quads
The board — everyone plays it
How it plays
Split unless somebody's kicker beats the ace
Four of a kind is higher than a flush by two full classes. The order runs royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush — so quads beat a flush, and a flush beats everything below it. As with every comparison in Hold'em the class decides it outright: the individual cards, the suit and the kicker never come into a comparison between different classes.
Holding the ace of the suit protects you from one thing only: a bigger flush. It does nothing at all against four of a kind, a full house, or a straight flush. Players who have learned to think of the nut flush as unbeatable — and most home game players have — are the ones who lose their stack on a paired board, because the word 'nut' in nut flush means best flush, not best hand.
If the board is not paired, four of a kind is impossible and a full house is impossible, and your flush really is close to the best hand available. The moment a pair appears, both of those come into play at once. That single feature of the board is worth more attention than anything about your own two cards, and it is the difference between betting a flush for value and paying somebody off with it.
Four of a kind meets a full house constantly, because a paired board makes both hands at the same time and out of the same cards. Meeting a flush needs the board to do two unrelated things — pair, and put three of one suit out. That is a much narrower set of runouts, which is why this comparison comes up in a home game perhaps once a year while the quads-over-boat cooler happens every few months.
Bet it, but bet it as a good hand rather than an unbeatable one, and treat a raise as information instead of an invitation. Most opponents on a paired board are not raising with a worse flush — a worse flush usually just calls. If the money keeps going in after your raise, you are very often against the hand that beats you, and the discipline to stop is worth more over a year than the pots you would win by never believing anyone.
Only a straight flush and a royal flush. That means when you hold quads on a board that has three suited cards in sequence, there is exactly one hand you can lose to and it is very unlikely to be out there. Everywhere else, quads are effectively the nuts, and the only decision left is how to price the second-best hand into the pot.
When all four cards of a rank are on the board, everybody has four of a kind and the pot is decided by the highest fifth card. A player holding a lone ace with nothing else beats a player holding a flush, because the flush is no longer the hand they are playing — the board's quads outrank it and the ace is the better kicker. This is the single strangest way a flush loses a pot, and it does happen.
Paired suited boards produce big pots and complicated showdowns, and the two together are how a home game ends up recounting chips at one in the morning. Running the game in a room on PokerChip.live means the stacks move as the hand is played, so the argument is about the cards rather than about the arithmetic.
FAQ
01
Four of a kind. It is the third-strongest hand and a flush is the fifth, with a full house between them.
02
No. Hand classes are absolute in Texas Hold'em, so even the lowest quads beat the highest flush.
03
No. The nut flush is only the best flush; it loses to a full house, four of a kind, a straight flush and a royal flush.
04
A straight flush and a royal flush, and nothing else.
05
Rarely. The board has to pair and also put three cards of one suit out, which is a much narrower set of runouts than the paired board that produces quads against a full house.
06
Everyone plays it and the fifth card decides the pot. A lone high card can beat a flush in that spot, because the flush is no longer the hand being played.
07
Yes — it is the fifth-strongest of ten classes and beats a straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair and high card. It is strong until the board pairs.
08
The one with the highest card, then the second, and so on down all five. Suits do not break ties in Texas Hold'em.
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