Hand rankings are frequency rankings
Why a flush beats a straight: there are fewer of them.
5 minute read
The order of poker hands is not arbitrary. Hands are ranked by how hard they are to make from five cards: the rarer, the stronger. The table below is computed by dealing every one of the 2,598,960 five-card hands and sorting them.
| Hand | Five-card hands | Probability | Odds against |
|---|---|---|---|
| Straight Flush | 40 | 0.0015% | 64973 : 1 |
| Four of a Kind | 624 | 0.0240% | 4164 : 1 |
| Full House | 3,744 | 0.14% | 693 : 1 |
| Flush | 5,108 | 0.20% | 508 : 1 |
| Straight | 10,200 | 0.39% | 254 : 1 |
| Three of a Kind | 54,912 | 2.11% | 46 : 1 |
| Two Pair | 123,552 | 4.75% | 20 : 1 |
| Pair | 1,098,240 | 42.26% | 1.37 : 1 |
| High Card | 1,302,540 | 50.12% | 1 : 1 |
All 2,598,960 five-card hands enumerated at build time by the site’s evaluator.
Two things stand out. Half of all five-card hands are nothing at all, and a pair is the next most common. And a flush (5,108 hands) is rarer than a straight (10,200), which is why it ranks higher — a fact that surprises many beginners who feel that five in a row is 'harder'.
Seven cards changes the picture
In Hold'em you choose the best five of seven, so made hands are far more common: a pair or better shows up about 83% of the time by the river, and a flush about 3%. The rankings stay the same; the frequencies do not.
Quick check
Which is more common in five cards: a straight or a flush?
Show answer
A straight (10,200 vs 5,108) — which is why the flush ranks higher.