Poker hand rankings
Best first. The percentages are not quoted from a table: the site's engine dealt every five-, six- and seven-card hand there is (2,598,960, 20,358,520 and 133,784,560 of them) and classified each one. Five cards is what you hold on the flop in hold'em, six on the turn, seven on the river.
| # | Hand | Example | 5 cards (flop) | 6 cards (turn) | 7 cards (river) | River, 1 in |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Royal flush | A♠K♠Q♠J♠T♠ | 0.00015% | 0.00092% | 0.0032% | 30,940 |
| 2 | Straight flush | 9♣8♣7♣6♣5♣ | 0.0014% | 0.0081% | 0.028% | 3,591 |
| 3 | Four of a kind | 9♣9♦9♥9♠A♦ | 0.024% | 0.072% | 0.17% | 595 |
| 4 | Full house | Q♦Q♥Q♠5♣5♦ | 0.14% | 0.82% | 2.60% | 38.5 |
| 5 | Flush | A♥T♥7♥4♥2♥ | 0.20% | 1.01% | 3.03% | 33.1 |
| 6 | Straight | T♠9♥8♦7♣6♠ | 0.39% | 1.78% | 4.62% | 21.6 |
| 7 | Three of a kind | 7♦7♥7♠K♣2♦ | 2.11% | 3.60% | 4.83% | 20.7 |
| 8 | Two pair | J♥J♠8♣8♦2♠ | 4.75% | 12.4% | 23.5% | 4.26 |
| 9 | One pair | K♣K♥Q♦7♠4♣ | 42.3% | 47.8% | 43.8% | 2.28 |
| 10 | High card | A♠J♦8♣6♥3♠ | 50.1% | 32.5% | 17.4% | 5.74 |
Each column is the chance that this is the best hand in that many cards, so a full house is not also counted as a pair. A royal flush is the ace-high straight flush; it is listed on its own because players ask about it on its own. Click any hand for its formula, its tie-break rule and how often each starting hand makes it.
Why the order is the order
Hands are ranked by how rare they are in five cards. Check the first column: every hand is rarer than every hand below it, all the way down. A flush beats a straight because there are 5,108 five-card flushes and 10,200 straights.
With seven cards, the order stops matching the odds
Hold'em gives you seven cards and you keep the best five. More cards make pairs almost unavoidable, and the rarity order breaks at the bottom: you end the river with high card 17.4% of the time, which is rarer than one pair and two pair (43.8% and 23.5%). If hold'em ranked hands by how often they come up, high card would beat one pair and two pair. The break already shows on the turn, with six cards, where high card (32.5%) is rarer than one pair (47.8%).
The rankings do not change: they come from five-card poker and hold'em kept them. The practical reading is that by the river, one pair is the most common hand (43.8%) and is often not enough, and that 82.6% of seven-card hands hold at least a pair.
How many different hands there are
Ignoring suits, which never rank, there are 7,462 five-card hands that can beat or lose to each other, from the royal flush down to 7♦5♣4♣3♣2♣. With seven cards only 4,824 of them can be anyone's best hand: the worst hand you can end a hold'em river with is 9♦8♦7♦5♣4♣, because any seven cards weaker than that pair up, make a straight or make a flush. Each hand's page has its own count.
Ties and kickers
- Only your best five cards count. A sixth or seventh card never breaks a tie, which is why a kicker stops mattering once five cards are used.
- Within a hand, compare the part that makes it first (the pair, the trips, the top of the straight), then the remaining cards from the highest down.
- Suits never rank. Two equal hands in different suits split the pot.
- The ace plays high or low in a straight, but only at the ends: 5-4-3-2-A is the lowest straight and Q-K-A-2-3 is not a straight at all.
Same pair: the kicker decides
| K♥Q♣ | K♥K♠Q♣9♦5♣ | Pair of kings, Q-9-5 kickers | Wins |
| K♦J♥ | K♦K♠J♥9♦5♣ | Pair of kings, J-9-5 kickers | Loses |
The board plays: both hands split
| J♣J♦ | A♦A♠K♣K♥Q♠ | Two pair, aces and kings, queen kicker | Split |
| 7♣2♦ | A♦A♠K♣K♥Q♠ | Two pair, aces and kings, queen kicker | Split |
The wheel is the lowest straight
| A♦2♣ | 5♣4♦3♥2♣A♦ | Straight, five high | Loses |
| 6♠2♦ | 6♠5♣4♦3♥2♦ | Straight, six high | Wins |
Suits never break a tie
| T♦3♣ | T♦9♣8♦7♥6♠ | Straight, ten high | Split |
| T♥4♦ | T♥9♣8♦7♥6♠ | Straight, ten high | Split |
Check any showdown: who wins? →
What your starting hand makes by the river
The same seven-card odds, split by the kind of starting hand. Every one of the 169 starting hands was dealt every one of its 2,118,760 boards; these are the averages over all 1,326 two-card combinations. Suited cards end with a flush 6.51% of the time and offsuit cards 1.95%. Each hand's page has the full grid.
| Best hand by the river | Pocket pair | Suited | Offsuit | Any two cards |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 0.0018% | 0.0078% | 0.0018% | 0.0032% |
| Straight flush | 0.016% | 0.066% | 0.016% | 0.028% |
| Four of a kind | 0.84% | 0.13% | 0.13% | 0.17% |
| Full house | 8.55% | 2.22% | 2.22% | 2.60% |
| Flush | 1.95% | 6.51% | 1.95% | 3.03% |
| Straight | 1.90% | 4.56% | 4.87% | 4.62% |
| Three of a kind | 11.7% | 4.33% | 4.42% | 4.83% |
| Two pair | 39.5% | 22.1% | 22.6% | 23.5% |
| One pair | 35.5% | 42.6% | 44.9% | 43.8% |
| High card | 0% | 17.4% | 18.9% | 17.4% |
Every hand
tools/build-rankings.mjsdeals all 2,598,960 five-card, 20,358,520 six-card and 133,784,560 seven-card hands and classifies each with the site's Rust/WebAssembly engine, the one the trainer and the equity calculator run.- The build fails unless the five-card counts equal their formulas (printed on each hand's page), the six- and seven-card counts equal the standard published tables, and a second classifier written separately from the rules agrees with the engine on every five-card hand and two million seven-card ones.
- The starting-hand figures add up: weighted by combinations, the 169 hands' river counts rebuild the seven-card column exactly.
- Making a hand is not winning with it. For that, see the preflop matchups, the odds pages and the starting hands. Raw data: rankings.json, rankings-hands.json.