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The order never changes: royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, high card. A higher class always beats a lower one, no matter what the individual cards are — the worst possible flush beats the best possible straight. Pick any two hands in the tool below to see which takes the pot, how often each one turns up, and what happens when both players end up with the same thing.
Compare any two hands and get the answer instantly
Real Texas Hold'em frequencies, not five-card draw numbers
Covers the tie-breakers the ranking chart cannot answer
What beats what
Rank 4 of 10
Three of a kind + a pair
Rank 5 of 10
Any five, same suit
Full House beats Flush. The stronger hand class always wins, whatever the cards inside it are.
The percentage is how often that is the best five-card hand a player can make from seven cards — their two hole cards plus the five on the board. These are Hold'em numbers; the five-card figures most charts print are different, and notably reverse the flush and the straight.
#
1
Hand
Royal flush
Example
A♠ K♠ Q♠ J♠ T♠
How often
0.0032%
#
2
Hand
Straight flush
Example
9♥ 8♥ 7♥ 6♥ 5♥
How often
0.028%
#
3
Hand
Four of a kind
Example
Q♠ Q♥ Q♦ Q♣ 7♠
How often
0.17%
#
4
Hand
Full house
Example
J♠ J♥ J♦ 4♠ 4♣
How often
2.60%
#
5
Hand
Flush
Example
A♦ J♦ 8♦ 5♦ 3♦
How often
3.03%
#
6
Hand
Straight
Example
9♣ 8♦ 7♠ 6♥ 5♣
How often
4.62%
#
7
Hand
Three of a kind
Example
8♠ 8♥ 8♦ K♣ 4♠
How often
4.83%
#
8
Hand
Two pair
Example
A♠ A♣ 6♥ 6♦ 9♠
How often
23.5%
#
9
Hand
One pair
Example
T♥ T♠ A♦ 7♣ 3♥
How often
43.8%
#
10
Hand
High card
Example
A♠ Q♦ 9♥ 6♣ 3♠
How often
17.4%
Each of these has its own page with the reasoning, the frequencies and the edge cases. They are the comparisons that come up at kitchen tables, in that order.
Matchup
Full house vs flush
Winner
Full house
Why people get it wrong
A flush looks harder to make and is not
Matchup
Three of a kind vs straight
Winner
Straight
Why people get it wrong
Three matching cards feel stronger than five in a row
Matchup
Three of a kind vs two pair
Winner
Three of a kind
Why people get it wrong
Two pair is four useful cards against three
Matchup
Full house vs straight
Winner
Full house
Why people get it wrong
Rarely disputed, often looked up mid-hand
Matchup
Three of a kind vs flush
Winner
Flush
Why people get it wrong
Same instinct as trips vs straight
Matchup
Flush vs straight
Winner
Flush
Why people get it wrong
The one people flip in seven-card games
Matchup
Straight flush vs royal flush
Winner
Royal flush
Why people get it wrong
A royal is just the highest straight flush
The hand order is not arbitrary and it is not tradition. It is a ranking by how hard each hand is to make, worked out long before anyone had a computer to check it. Four of a kind beats a full house because quads are about fifteen times rarer. Once you know that, you never have to memorise the chart again — you only have to remember which hand is harder to hit.
With five cards a flush is rarer than a straight, which is why the flush ranks higher. With seven cards to choose from — as in Hold'em — a flush is actually the more common of the two: 3.03% against 4.62%. The ranking still says the flush wins, because the ranking was fixed for five-card hands and never changed. It is the only place where the intuition and the chart genuinely disagree, and it is worth knowing rather than being surprised by at the table.
Two nines and a three beat ace-king-queen-jack-nine of mixed suits, every time. The worst possible flush beats the best possible straight. People lose money at home games by treating an ugly version of a strong hand as somehow worth less than a pretty version of a weak one — the ranking does not care what your cards look like, only which class they make.
This is where the chart stops helping and most home-game arguments start. Two flushes are settled by the highest card in each, then the second, and so on. Two full houses are settled by the three of a kind first and only then by the pair. Two straights are settled by the top card. Two pairs compare the higher pair, then the lower pair, then the fifth card. If all five cards match, the pot is split — suits never break a tie in Hold'em.
Your hand is always the best five cards out of seven, and they do not have to include your hole cards. If the board is A♠ K♠ Q♠ J♠ T♠ then everybody at the table has a royal flush and the pot is split, no matter what anyone is holding. The same idea causes quieter arguments: if the board pairs and gives everyone two pair, the winner is whoever has the best fifth card — and sometimes that fifth card is on the board too, which means a chop.
Because one pair is the most common hand in Hold'em at nearly 44%, most showdowns are settled by the unpaired cards next to the pair rather than by anything on the ranking chart. Ace-king and ace-four both make a pair of aces on an ace-high board; the king wins, and it wins a lot. This is why playing weak aces from early position is expensive in a way the hand-ranking chart never warns you about.
New players look this up two or three times a night for the first few sessions, and a phone unlocked next to the cards is slower than a chart on the table. The printable version of the rankings is a one-page sheet with the order, an example of each hand, and the standard chip values on the back, sized to sit next to the dealer button without getting in the way.
The reason these questions get heated is not that the answer is unclear — it is that somebody has already pushed chips in. Agree before the first hand who reads the board when there is a dispute, and keep the pot visible so nobody is reconstructing it from memory afterwards. If you run the game on PokerChip.live, every bet, pot and payout is recorded as it happens, so the disagreement is only ever about the cards.
FAQ
01
Royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, high card — strongest to weakest.
02
Yes. A flush beats a straight in every standard poker game, even though a flush is the more common of the two when you are making a hand from seven cards.
03
Yes. A full house is ranked fourth and a flush fifth, so the full house wins regardless of how high the flush is.
04
Nothing. It is the highest hand in poker. Two players can only hold one at the same time if all five cards are on the board, and then the pot is split.
05
Not in Texas Hold'em. If two players make identical five-card hands the pot is split; no suit outranks another. Some other card games rank suits, but Hold'em does not.
06
Compare the five cards in order, highest first. Two full houses compare the three of a kind before the pair; two flushes compare the top card, then the next. If all five match, split the pot.
07
Any of the three, in Hold'em. Your hand is the best five cards from the seven available, so if the board is stronger than anything you can add, the board plays.
08
One pair, at about 44% of seven-card hands. High card is next at roughly 17%, then two pair at around 23.5% — meaning most pots are decided by a pair and a kicker.
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