The poker hand rankings are the backbone of the whole game. In Texas Hold'em you build the best five-card hand you can from your two hole cards and the five community cards, and whoever holds the highest-ranked hand at showdown wins. Learn this order cold. Everything else depends on it.
The 10 poker hands, strongest to weakest
How tie-breakers work
When two players hold the same category of hand, the winner is decided by the cards themselves: the “kickers”. Compare the ranked cards from the top down: two flushes are compared highest card first, then the next, and so on. Two players with one pair compare the pair first, then their highest side card, then the next. If every relevant card matches, the pot is split.
The tricky ones beginners get wrong
Three comparisons trip up new players more than any others:
- Flush beats a straight. Same-suit is rarer than a plain run of five, so the flush wins.
- Full house beats a flush. Three-of-a-kind plus a pair outranks any five same-suit cards.
- A straight can use a low ace. A-2-3-4-5 (the “wheel”) is a valid straight, but it's the lowest one: the ace plays low here, so it loses to 2-3-4-5-6.
The fastest way to lock these in is repetition. Our hand-ranking trainer shows you two hands at a time and explains which wins and why, so the poker hand rankings become automatic before you sit down for real money.
Building your best five cards
In Texas Hold'em you're dealt two hole cards and share five community cards, giving you seven to work with, but a poker hand is always exactly five cards. You simply pick the best five available, and the other two are ignored. That means you can use both of your hole cards, just one, or occasionally none at all when the five community cards already make your strongest hand. When the board itself is the best five cards for everyone still in, the players “play the board” and split the pot. Learning to spot your best five quickly (especially flushes and straights that lean on the community cards) is one of the first skills that separates a confident player from a hesitant beginner, and it's exactly what the hand-ranking trainer is built to drill.
Kickers and the fifth card: a worked example
The tie-breaker rule is easiest to see with a concrete hand. Say you hold A♠ K♦ and your opponent holds A♥ Q♣, and the board comes A♣ 9♠ 6♦ 4♥ 2♣. You both have a pair of aces: a tie on the pair itself. Poker then compares your remaining cards from the top: your best kicker is the king, theirs is the queen. King beats queen, so you win the whole pot with “aces, king kicker”. Only when all five cards match in rank is the pot split, which is why a strong kicker matters so much.
How often you actually make each hand
Knowing what beats what is easier once you feel how rare each hand really is. These are the standard poker frequencies, worth keeping in the back of your mind:
- A royal flush is astronomically rare: roughly 1 in 650,000 five-card hands. Most players go years without one.
- One pair is the most common made hand, about 42% of random five-card hands pair up, which is why a single pair often wins small pots but loses big ones.
- You're dealt a pocket pair only about 1 in 17 hands (roughly 6%), and when you have one you'll flop a set around 12% of the time.
- Start with two suited cards and you'll flop a flush draw about 11% of the time: a draw, not a finished flush, so it still needs help.
The takeaway: the fancy hands almost never come, and most pots are decided by modest holdings and good kickers.
Do suits matter in poker?
No. In standard poker no suit outranks another: spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs are all equal. Suits only matter for making a hand (five of the same suit is a flush), never for breaking a tie between two finished hands. So if two players both make an ace-high flush with identical card ranks, the fact that one is in spades and one in hearts changes nothing: the pot is split evenly. If you ever hear someone claim “spades beat hearts”, that's a house rule from other card games, not poker.
Do the rankings change in other poker variants?
The standard ranking above covers Texas Hold'em, Omaha and most games you'll meet, but a couple of popular variants tweak it, so it's worth knowing:
- Omaha uses the exact same hand rankings, with one rule change: you must use exactly two of your four hole cards plus three from the board. The hand you can make is often stronger than it looks.
- Short-Deck (Six-Plus) Hold'em removes the 2s through 5s, so flushes become rarer than full houses: in this game a flush beats a full house, and in many rooms a set beats a straight. Always check the posted ranking before you sit down.
- Lowball games (Razz, 2-7) flip everything: the lowest hand wins, so the rankings are effectively reversed and pairs are bad, not good.
Unless a table clearly says otherwise, assume the standard order on this page applies.
The fastest way to memorise the order
If the ten-hand list feels like a lot, anchor it with a few simple ideas rather than rote memory. The rarest hands sit at the top: flushes and full houses are hard to make, so they beat the everyday pairs and two pairs you will see constantly. Learn them in groups of three or four: the "big three" almost nobody makes in a session (royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind), the "strong middle" that win most big pots (full house, flush, straight), and the "everyday four" that decide the rest (three of a kind, two pair, one pair, high card). Drilling the order with our hand-ranking trainer for a few minutes a day turns this from a list you recite into something you simply recognise at the table.
From rankings to real decisions
Knowing the ranking of your made hand is only step one. Next you want to know your chance of improving or of currently being ahead. That's where the odds calculator comes in. Combine solid knowledge of the poker hand rankings with a feel for equity and you'll make far fewer of the costly mistakes that sink beginners.