Most Commonly Asked Poker Questions
Not sure what beats a full house or what a straight can beat? Here are the answers to the most commonly-asked poker questions this side of the Strip.
A hand is ranked within its category using the ranks of its cards. Individual cards are ranked, from highest to lowest: A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2. However, aces have the lowest rank under ace-to-five low or ace-to-six low rules, or under high rules as part of a five-high straight or straight flush. On top you see the ranking of all poker hands. You can click on the name to find more statistics for this category. There is also a more detailed table, where the categories are broken up into their ranks. The category All Hands is broken up into 10 groups: Royal Flush, Straight Flush, Four of a Kind, Full House, Flush, Straight, Three of a Kind, Two Pair, One Pair and High Card.
Does a flush beat a full house?
No. A full house beats a flush in the standard poker hand rankings. The odds against making a full house in a game of Texas Hold’em are about 36-to-1, while the odds against making a flush are 32-to-1. The full house is a more rare hand and beats a flush.
Does a flush beat a straight?
Yes. Using the standard poker hand rankings, a flush beats a straight, regardless of the strength of the straight. The odds against making a straight in Texas Hold’em are about 21-to-1, making it a more common hand than a flush (32-to-1 odds against).
Does a straight beat a full house?
No. The odds against making a full house in Texas Hold’em are about 36-to-1, while the odds against making a straight are about 21-to-1. Both are strong five-card hands, but a full house occurs less often than a straight. A full house beats a straight in the poker hand rankings.
Does three of a kind beat two pair?
Yes. Both three of a kind and two pair can make a lot of money in poker, but three of a kind is the best hand when it goes head to head with two pair. The odds against making three of a kind in Texas Hold’em is about 20-to-1, while the odds against making two pair is about 3-to-1.
Does three of a kind beat a straight?
No. The odds of making both of these hands are very close in a game of Texas Hold’em. The odds against making a straight are 20.6-to-1, while the odds against making three of a kind are 19.7-to-1. The straight comes about slightly less often, making it the winner against three of a kind in the poker hand rankings.
Does a flush beat three of a kind?
Yes. The battle of strong hands between a flush and three of a kind sees the flush as the stronger hand. The odds against making a flush in Texas Hold’em are about 32-to-1, with odds against making three of a kind at around 20-to-1.
Does a straight beat two pair?
Yes. The poker hand rankings dictate that a straight is a stronger hand than two pair. The straight occurs with about 21-to-1 odds against in Texas Hold’em, while the odds against making two pair stand at about 3-to-1.
Does four of a kind beat a full house?
Yes. Both four of a kind and a full house are among the strongest poker hands, but four of a kind is a much rarer holding. Texas Hold’em odds against making four of a kind are 594-to-1, while you have about 36-to-1 odds against making a full house.
Does three of a kind beat a flush?
No. When the flush and three of a kind go head to head, the flush comes out as the best according to the poker hand rankings. The odds against making three of a kind sit around 20-to-1, with the odds against hitting a flush at 32-to-1.
Does a full house beat a straight in poker?
Yes. The full house comes in less often than a straight. In Texas Hold’em, the odds against drawing a full house are around 36-to-1, while the odds against making a straight are around 21-to-1.
Does a straight flush beat four of a kind?
Yes. Four of a kind is an exceedingly rare hand in poker, but the straight flush is an even more elusive five-card hand. The odds against making a straight flush in Texas Hold’em is about 3,590-to-1, much rarer than four of a kind (594-to-1 odds against)
Based on the tabulated data and chart generated, there are a few interesting observations to be made. The are listed below:
1. Pair A is best hand
There should be no surprise that Pair A is the best hand. Having a pair A, helps you to easily get the best possible double pair combo or three-of-kind combo. While it might be harder to strike straight or flush with it, those scenarios are typically less likely to happen. Thus, making pair A better in general.
2. Offsuit 72 is the worst hand
This might be less known to people and it could be counter intuitive. Some might have thought that perhaps Offsuit J2 would be worse than Offsuit 72. But, that is not the case.
To understand why this is the case, we can start thinking about what are combinations that are most likely to lead to a winning combo assuming no one folds. Given any hands, we are more likely to win with double pair, followed by 3-of-a-kind, straight flush and so forth.
Poker Hand Odds Chart
With offsuit 72, we are more likely to win double pair of pair 7 and pair 2, followed by three-of-a-kind and so on. However, it is also worthwhile to note that it is highly like other players has a better double pair or three-of-a-kind. This bring us to the next important lesson to learn.
3. Having a suited, closely connected hand with A, K or Q is better than having pairs that is less than 9
If you were to investigate the table or chart, the hand ranked 5th is Suited AK. What is even more interesting is pairs hand only took 6 spots from rank 1 to rank 20. Most of the remaining spots were taken up by suited, closely connected hands with a high card like A, K or Q.
The reason for this is similar to previous point that we made. It is more frequent that players will win using double pairs or 3-of-a-kind. Therefore, having a higher card helps to push you to a better standing to win.
One final note on this topic - Pair 9 is the last pair hand ranked in the top 20 hands. Playing any other pairs hand may not be as good as conventional wisdom might suggest.
Poker Hand Rankings And Odds
4. Winning chance drops fast within the top 7 ranked hands
This is the lesson that really took us by surprised. While developing our poker odds calculator, we did had a sense that odds of winning was somewhat asymmetric. But, the chart above really solidify how much the asymmetry was.
Within the top 7 ranked hands, the probability of winning drops really fast from paired A to paired K and so forth. If you get the top 7 hands, you really should work hard to get through the preflop.
5. You are more likely to win a 6 players match than a 9 players one
A player with hands that are in the top 7 ranks in a 6 players game have a much better chance of winning in a 9 players game. For example, Paired A has roughly 49.5% preflop winning probability in a 6-player game compared to only 35% in a 9-players game. While 14.5% difference is not as big as it sounds, it has a significant impact on the pot odds that you will need to make a value play. In short, it might be easier to make money off a 6 players game rather than a 9 players game.
Hold Em Poker Hand Odds
6. In a no-folding six players match, your hand range to play is very large
This point is not as crucial as other points we have made. But, we find this observation quite interesting although it is unlikely to happen in real life.
Suppose that we are in a no-folding 6 players Texas Hold'Em match. During every betting session, our pot odds is 5-to-1. This means that for every $1 we bet, we stand to win $5.
Based on this pot odds, our break-even pot equity or winning odds is around 16.67%. Using the chart above, we can see that we can play any hands better than rank 106. This means that players can play 105 types of hands out of 169 types (59.2% of all types) and still perform better than break even! Basically, you have a very large hand range to play in this type of situation.
Poker Odds Chart
Nonetheless, this is a just-for-fun analysis, which does not happen that often in real life. Based on some of our experience playing, it could happen sometimes during preflop though.
7. Our hand rankings are similar to Sklansky hand groups
Sklansky hand groups was formulated by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth. Both of these old school poker players understand the math very well. It is no surprise that our hand rankings aligns very well with their proposed hand groups.
Sklansky hand group proposes that Tier 1 group consists of pair A, pair K, pair Q, pair J and suited AK. These cards are essentially ranked 1 to 5 via our Monte Carlo simulation. The same observation can be made for Sklansky Tier 2 and Tier 3 hand group.