Poker hierarchy: the 10 hands ranked and what beats what

A straight against a flush, a full house against four of a kind: at showdown, the same question always comes up. The poker hierarchy settles it once and for all. It ranks the ten possible hands, from the royal flush to a lone high card, and the order is not arbitrary: the rarer a hand, the stronger it is.

The ranking applies to classic poker with a 52-card deck, whether you play with friends or against a dealer. At Casino King, the online casino for Belgian players (licence B+19763), it also decides your winnings in its card games against the machine and at its poker tables against the house.

The 10 poker hands from strongest to weakest

In classic poker, a hand is made of five cards. Here is the standard order, with each hand beating every hand below it:

1. Royal flush: ace, king, queen, jack and 10 of the same suit.

2. Straight flush: five consecutive cards of the same suit, such as the 9-8-7-6-5 of hearts.

3. Four of a kind: four cards of the same rank.

4. Full house: three of a kind plus a pair, such as three kings and two sevens.

5. Flush: five cards of the same suit, not in sequence.

6. Straight: five consecutive cards, not all of the same suit.

7. Three of a kind: three cards of the same rank.

8. Two pair: two different pairs.

9. One pair: two cards of the same rank.

10. High card: no made hand, so the highest card plays.

The cards themselves rank from the ace down to the 2: ace, king, queen, jack, 10, 9 and so on. The ace is therefore the highest card, a king outranks a jack, and two hands of the same type are decided by the rank of their cards.

The four suits are spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs. A flush simply means five cards from one of them.

Royal flush, straight flush and four of a kind at the top

The royal flush is nothing more than the highest possible straight flush. There are only four of them, one per suit, which makes it the rarest hand in the game. An ordinary straight flush, such as the 8-7-6-5-4 of spades, ranks just below. Between two straight flushes, the one with the higher top card wins.

Four of a kind comes next. Four aces beat four kings, and so on. In classic five-card poker, two players can never hold the same four of a kind, as there are only four cards of each rank.

Straight or flush: which wins in poker?

The flush wins. Many players hesitate because a straight looks harder to make, but the numbers settle it: of the 2,598,960 five-card hands that can be drawn from a 52-card deck, 5,108 are flushes and 10,200 are straights. A straight turns up almost exactly twice as often, so it is worth less.

In a straight, the ace can play high (ace-king-queen-jack-10) or low (5-4-3-2-ace), but never in the middle: neither queen-king-ace-2-3 nor king-ace-2-3-4 is a straight. The lowest straight is therefore five-high.

Full house, three of a kind and two pair in the poker hierarchy

A full house combines three of a kind with a pair. To compare two full houses, you look at the three of a kind first: three nines and two twos beat three eights and two aces. The pair only decides when both players hold the same three of a kind, which can only happen with community cards, as in Texas hold'em.

Three of a kind sits below the straight and above two pair. Between two two-pair hands, the higher pair decides, then the second pair, then the fifth card. A single pair comes next, and high card brings up the rear.

How a tie between two hands is broken

When two players hold the same type of hand, you compare its rank first, then the remaining cards one by one, from highest to lowest. When both players hold a pair of queens, the one whose highest side card is an ace beats the one holding a king: that side card is called the kicker.

Two flushes are compared the same way: highest card first, then the next, down to the fifth. The suits themselves have no value in classic poker. A heart flush does not beat a club flush with the same ranks. If all five ranks are identical, the pot is split.

The odds of being dealt each hand

For five cards dealt with no draw, this is the number of combinations for each hand: 4 royal flushes, 36 other straight flushes, 624 four-of-a-kind hands, 3,744 full houses, 5,108 flushes, 10,200 straights, 54,912 three-of-a-kind hands, 123,552 two-pair hands, 1,098,240 one-pair hands and 1,302,540 high-card hands.

In other words, half of all hands hold nothing at all, and only one in 649,740 is a royal flush. Rarity follows the hierarchy exactly.

Winning hands in video poker and against the dealer

In video poker, everything comes down to the paytable. You receive five cards and choose which to hold; the others are replaced, and your final hand is paid according to that paytable: the higher the combination, the bigger the multiplier. Casino King's online video poker games include three machines: Video Poker by GameArt, 4 of a kind Bonus Poker by Amusnet, which pays extra for four of a kind, and Joker Poker, where the joker stands in for any card. With it, a hand that does not exist in classic poker becomes possible: five of a kind. Each game's paytable shows the lowest paying hand.

At the tables against the house, the hierarchy is used to beat the dealer's hand. On Caribbean Stud Poker (GameArt, 97.30% RTP) and Caribbean Poker (BetSoft, 98%), the dealer only qualifies with ace-king or better; otherwise the ante is paid and the raise is returned. The maximum win shown on both tables is 200 times the stake.

Triple Edge Poker (BetSoft, 97.30%) is played with three cards, and the order changes: the straight flush stays on top, but three of a kind beats a straight, and a straight beats a flush, because with three cards a straight is rarer than a flush. The dealer qualifies with queen-high or better.

Tricky cases in the poker hand rankings

Want to put the rankings to the test? The games can be played in demo mode without registering; to play for real money, you need a verified player account.