Poker hand probabilities
How often does a full house come up, or a flush, or nothing at all? It depends on how many cards you get to choose from. In Texas Hold'em you use the best five of seven cards, which makes every strong hand more common than in five-card poker. Both tables below count every possible hand.
Texas Hold'em: seven cards
Your two hole cards plus the five on the board, if you see them all. These are the chances that your final seven cards make each hand; whether it wins depends on what the other players make.
| Hand | Combinations | Chance | Odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 4,324 | 0.0032% | 1 in 30,940 |
| Straight flush | 41,584 | 0.031% | 1 in 3,217 |
| Four of a kind | 224,848 | 0.17% | 1 in 595 |
| Full house | 3,473,184 | 2.60% | 1 in 38.5 |
| Flush | 4,047,644 | 3.03% | 1 in 33.1 |
| Straight | 6,180,020 | 4.62% | 1 in 21.6 |
| Three of a kind | 6,461,620 | 4.83% | 1 in 20.7 |
| Two pair | 31,433,400 | 23.50% | 1 in 4.3 |
| One pair | 58,627,800 | 43.82% | 1 in 2.3 |
| High card | 23,294,460 | 17.41% | 1 in 5.7 |
What stands out
- One pair is the most common hand. It comes up 43.8% of the time, far more than no pair at all, which happens only 17.4% of the time with seven cards.
- Two pair beats high card for frequency. With seven cards you make two pair 23.5% of the time.
- The ranking still holds. Each hand in the table is rarer than the one below it, so the usual order of hands is right for Hold'em too: a flush (3.03%) is rarer than a straight (4.62%), and a full house (2.60%) rarer than a flush.
- A royal flush is very rare but not mythical. 1 in 30,940 seven-card hands. At a full table that sees many hands, someone makes one now and then.
Five-card poker
Five cards and no choice, as in five-card stud or a video poker deal before the draw.
| Hand | Combinations | Chance | Odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 4 | 0.00015% | 1 in 649,740 |
| Straight flush | 40 | 0.0015% | 1 in 64,974 |
| Four of a kind | 624 | 0.024% | 1 in 4,165 |
| Full house | 3,744 | 0.14% | 1 in 694 |
| Flush | 5,108 | 0.20% | 1 in 509 |
| Straight | 10,200 | 0.39% | 1 in 255 |
| Three of a kind | 54,912 | 2.11% | 1 in 47.3 |
| Two pair | 123,552 | 4.75% | 1 in 21.0 |
| One pair | 1,098,240 | 42.26% | 1 in 2.4 |
| High card | 1,302,540 | 50.12% | 1 in 2.0 |
The hand rankings
- Royal flush: A, K, Q, J and 10 of one suit.
- Straight flush: five cards in a row of one suit.
- Four of a kind: four cards of one rank.
- Full house: three of one rank and two of another.
- Flush: five cards of one suit.
- Straight: five cards in a row. The ace plays high (10-J-Q-K-A) or low (A-2-3-4-5).
- Three of a kind: three cards of one rank.
- Two pair: two cards of one rank and two of another.
- One pair: two cards of one rank.
- High card: none of the above; the highest card decides.
How we counted
Every one of the 133,784,560 possible seven-card hands was dealt by a program and sorted by the best five-card hand it contains. The sorting code was checked hand by hand against a second, independent evaluator. The five-card table was computed from formulas and confirmed by scoring all 2,598,960 hands. See the methodology.
For the chances that matter during a hand, such as hitting a flush draw or flopping a set, see the odds chart.
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