Poker Hands Rankings

What is a Poker Hand?

Poker hands are made up of five cards, and these five-card hands are ranked according to their statistical probability. Put simply, the poker rankings chart is based on how difficult it is to make specific five-card combinations.

For example, the probability of making a five-card combination containing a pair (i.e. two cards of the same value) is 42.25%. In comparison, there’s a 0.39% chance you’ll make a straight (e.g. 3-4-5-6-7) when five cards are dealt at random. Therefore, because a straight is less likely than a pair, it ranks higher on the poker hand chart.

Before I go any further, it’s important to explain that the way you make a five-card hand depends on the poker variant you’re playing. I’ll be using Texas Hold’em to illustrate the concept of poker card rankings because it’s the most popular variant in the world.

However, for clarity, each variant has its own poker rules. With this in mind, here’s how you make five-card hands in the main variants of poker:

Despite having different dynamics, each variant ranks poker hands in the same way. There are, however, some poker variants that have different hand rankings.

Do All Types of Poker Hands Rank the Same Way?

No, they don’t. There is a category of poker variants known as lowball games. I don’t play a lot of lowball poker, but certain variants are popular at the top online poker sites. Specifically, you’ll often be able to play 2-7 Lowball and Razz online.

These variants, like other lowball poker games, award pots to the worst hands, aka the lowest-value hand. For example, in Razz, the top-ranking hand is 5-4-3-2-A, irrespective of suits. This poker hand trumps all others because it’s the lowest straight possible.

Additionally, as is the case in most lowball poker hands, flushes don’t count. Basically, if you’ve got a hand filled with low-value cards, it’s got a good chance of winning a showdown.

Other Poker Variants

Lowball games aren’t the only ones that have their own poker card rankings. The following games also put a spin on the standard poker hand ranking chart:

Split-Pot Poker Variants

Split-pot poker variants are exactly what you’d expect them to be. The pots are split between the best high-value and best low-value hands. The most popular split-pot variant is Omaha Hi-Lo, which sees 50% of the pot go to the best hand according to a standard poker rankings chart and 50% go to the best lowball hand.

Exotic Poker Variants

Poker players are always trying to spice things up by tweaking the rules of traditional poker variants. These tweaks often include adding jokers and removing cards. A great example of this is 6+ Hold’em.

Overall, the game is identical to Texas Hold’em. The twist, however, is that all cards worth less than six have been removed from the deck. Removing these cards means it’s harder to make flushes than full houses.

This alters the poker hand rankings chart for 6+ Hold’em. Specifically, flushes rank as the fourth most powerful hand above full houses and straights. Under normal conditions, full houses are worth more than flushes.

Poker Hand Rankings Chart

I’ve already said that straights beat pairs, but what about other hands? Does a set beat a full house? What about flushes? The poker hand rankings table below has all the answers you need.

Odds of Making Hands in Poker

I said earlier that poker card rankings are based on probabilities. A good way to truly understand what this means is by looking at the probability of making specific hands. The tables below give you this information.

Poker Hand Odds

The table below shows the probability of making a hand if five cards are dealt randomly from a standard 52-card deck. For example, if you picked up a shuffled deck and dealt five cards from the top, there’s a 42.25% chance that the hand will contain a pair. If you want to learn more about poker odds in detail, I’ve also prepared a guide for this.

Odds of Flopping Poker Hands in Texas Hold’em

The table below tells how often you’ll make each hand on the flop in Texas Hold’em. If you recall, everyone starts with two hole cards in Hold’em. The flop consists of three community cards. When you combine these cards, you get the following probabilities:

Poker Hand vs. Poker Hand: Test Your Skills

Before I give you my final tip for playing poker hands, I want to put your newfound knowledge to the test. Below are three hand vs. hand showdowns. Without looking at our rankings chart, can you say what hand each player has made and who the winner is? The answers are at the very bottom of this page:

Hand 1

• Player A has A♠ K♥
• Player B has Q♠ Q♣
• Board: A♦ K♠ 8♣ 4♠ Q♦
• Result?

Hand 2

• Player A has 6♣ 7♥
• Player B has 9♥ 10♠
• Board: 4♥ 5♣ 8♠ 7♦ J♣
• Result?

Hand 3

• Player A has 10♥ 8♥
• Player B has 9♥ 3♥
• Board: 2♥ 3♠ J♥ 8♣ A♥
• Result?

How to Play Poker Hands Like a Pro

You can learn more about playing specific hands in my poker strategy guide. However, before I let you put your knowledge of poker card rankings into practice, I want to give you a few things to think about.

From a strategic perspective, I want you to see the poker hand rankings chart as more than a list. Viewed correctly, it can be a great way for you to improve your hand-reading skills. Let me explain: if you understand the rankings of hands and their statistical likelihood, you can get a better sense of what people might have.

Example Scenario

➡️ We know that you’ll make a pair on the flop 29% of the time in Hold’em. We can simplify this and say an opponent is likely to have a pair or better approximately 1/3 of the time.

• Based on this alone, there’s a greater chance an opponent has missed the flop than they’ve made a pair.
• Let’s say your opponent raises pre-flop and makes a standard continuation bet on an unconnected board i.e. there isn’t a chance they could have a full house, flush, straight, or two pair. An example of an unconnected flop would be 6♥ 10♠ A♦.

➡️ In this scenario, your opponent is representing a small range of hands. Specifically, a pair or three-of-a-kind.

• We know there’s a 29% chance they’ve hit a pair and an 11.5% chance they’ve hit three-of-a-kind (if they have a pocket pair).
• Therefore, based on probability, it’s more likely that your opponent currently doesn’t have anything.

Reading An Opponent’s Bet Using Poker Card Rankings

I must stress that this is a very simple example of how to use poker hands rankings to make decisions. You need to think about other things, such as betting patterns, position, and table dynamics, to make accurate reads.

That being said, you will have a better general understanding of how likely someone is to have certain hands if you know the poker hand ranking chart. When you combine the rankings with the odds of making specific hands on the flop, you’ll give yourself a better chance of making accurate reads from the start of a hand.