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A straight flush is five cards of the same suit in consecutive order — 9♥ 8♥ 7♥ 6♥ 5♥ is one. It is the second-strongest hand in poker, beaten only by a royal flush, which is itself just the highest straight flush there is. In Texas Hold'em you will make one about once in every 3,591 hands, which puts it firmly in the category of hands most players see a handful of times a year. Below, put it against anything you like and watch what happens to four of a kind.
What counts as a straight flush, and what does not
How the ace plays at both the top and the bottom of the run
The Hold'em odds — 1 in 3,591, seven cards, not five
What beats what
Rank 2 of 10
Five in a row, same suit
Rank 3 of 10
Four cards of one rank
Straight Flush beats Four of a Kind. The stronger hand class always wins, whatever the cards inside it are.
Nine per suit, thirty-six in the deck, plus the four royals above them. Ranked by the highest card in the run — that is the only thing that separates two of them.
Name
King-high
Example
K♠ Q♠ J♠ T♠ 9♠
Rank among straight flushes
Best below a royal
Name
Queen-high
Example
Q♦ J♦ T♦ 9♦ 8♦
Rank among straight flushes
2nd
Name
Jack-high
Example
J♥ T♥ 9♥ 8♥ 7♥
Rank among straight flushes
3rd
Name
Ten-high
Example
T♣ 9♣ 8♣ 7♣ 6♣
Rank among straight flushes
4th
Name
Nine-high
Example
9♥ 8♥ 7♥ 6♥ 5♥
Rank among straight flushes
5th
Name
Eight-high
Example
8♠ 7♠ 6♠ 5♠ 4♠
Rank among straight flushes
6th
Name
Seven-high
Example
7♦ 6♦ 5♦ 4♦ 3♦
Rank among straight flushes
7th
Name
Six-high
Example
6♣ 5♣ 4♣ 3♣ 2♣
Rank among straight flushes
8th
Name
Five-high (the steel wheel)
Example
5♥ 4♥ 3♥ 2♥ A♥
Rank among straight flushes
Lowest
Only one hand in the deck is above a straight flush, and it is the same hand with better cards. Everything else loses to it outright, no matter how strong it looks.
Hand
Royal flush
Result against a straight flush
Loses to it
Why
The royal is the ace-high straight flush — the same hand, one rank up.
Hand
Four of a kind
Result against a straight flush
Beaten
Why
Quads are the third class down. Even four aces lose.
Hand
Full house
Result against a straight flush
Beaten
Why
Two classes below, however big the trips are.
Hand
Flush
Result against a straight flush
Beaten
Why
Same suit, but the cards are not in sequence.
Hand
Straight
Result against a straight flush
Beaten
Why
In sequence, but not all one suit.
Five cards, one suit, consecutive ranks. All three conditions at once — five hearts that do not run in order are a flush, and five cards in order that are not all hearts are a straight. Both are good hands and neither is this one. In Hold'em the five cards can come from any mix of your two hole cards and the five on the board, so a straight flush is often three community cards doing most of the work.
An ace can play high, above the king, or low, below the two. That gives you the royal flush at the top and the five-high straight flush — A-2-3-4-5 of one suit, known as the steel wheel — at the bottom. What the ace cannot do is turn a corner: Q-K-A-2-3 is not a straight flush, or a straight, or anything at all. This is the same rule that governs ordinary straights, and it is the one people get wrong most often at a kitchen table.
By the highest card in the run, and nothing else. King-high beats queen-high, queen-high beats jack-high, and the steel wheel loses to every other straight flush because it plays as five-high. Suits never break the tie in Hold'em, so two straight flushes with the same top card split the pot — which in practice means the run is entirely on the board and both players are playing the same five cards.
About once in 3,591 hands in Texas Hold'em, counting the best five of seven cards. That makes it roughly nine times more common than a royal flush and about six times rarer than four of a kind. A weekly home game of thirty hands an hour will produce one every few months across the whole table. The five-card figure most charts print — 1 in 72,193 — describes a different game and badly overstates how rare it is here.
A straight flush almost always arrives from a hand that was already drawing to something else. Suited connectors are the classic source: 8♥7♥ on a 9♥6♥2♣ flop has both a flush draw and an open-ended straight draw, and two of the cards that complete either one complete both. That double-draw shape is why suited connectors are worth playing in position even though they miss most flops — the times they connect, they connect enormously.
Straight flushes cost other people money precisely because they are invisible. The player holding a made flush cannot fold it, the player holding a straight will not fold it, and both of them are drawing dead. If you have one, bet it like a flush rather than slowing down: the pot is only as big as the second-best hand is willing to make it, and the second-best hand on a board like that is usually very willing indeed.
Quads feel like the bigger hand and they are not. Four of a kind is the third class in the ranking and loses to any straight flush, including the steel wheel. The reason it feels wrong is frequency: quads are about six times more common, so most players have held four of a kind and far fewer have held a straight flush. The order does not follow how impressive the hand looks, it follows how rare it is.
Most straight flush arguments at a home game are really about whether the ace can wrap around, and they are almost never settled by two people repeating themselves. Keep the ranking somewhere everyone can see it, and run the game in a room that records what actually happened. On PokerChip.live the chips and the result are tracked as the hand plays, so the discussion afterwards is about the hand rather than about who had what.
FAQ
01
Five cards of the same suit in consecutive order, such as 9♥ 8♥ 7♥ 6♥ 5♥. It is the second-strongest hand in poker.
02
Only a royal flush — the ace-high straight flush. Everything else, including four of a kind, loses to it.
03
Yes, always. Four of a kind is one class lower, so even four aces lose to the lowest straight flush.
04
Roughly 1 in 3,591 in Texas Hold'em, using the best five of seven cards. That excludes royal flushes, which are counted separately at 1 in 30,940.
05
Yes. It is called the steel wheel and it plays as five-high, which makes it the lowest straight flush there is — it loses to every other one.
06
No. Q-K-A-2-3 is not a hand. The ace plays either above the king or below the two, never as a bridge between them.
07
The one with the higher top card. If both runs are identical the pot is split, because suits do not break ties in Texas Hold'em.
08
Yes — it is the highest one. Most rule books define the royal as the ace-high straight flush rather than as a separate class of hand.
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