What Beats What in Poker?
In the game of poker, what beats what? This listing below shows the best possible 5 card hands assuming no wild cards or jokers. 5 card hands are used in most of the popular poker games including Texas Hold’em, Omaha and 7 Card Stud. They are listed from best to worst, and you can also find the basic Texas Hold’em Hands Odds while playing.
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Standard Hand Rankings
- Royal flush:
- Straight flush:
- Four of a kind:
- Full house:
- Flush:
- Straight:
- Three of a kind:
- Two pair:
- One pair:
- High card:
Download the Poker Hand Rankings PDF
Card images are property of Weak Tight (Hand history sharing/conversion tools).
Hand Ranking Rules:
The following general rules apply to evaluating poker hands, whatever set of hand values are used.
- Individual cards are ranked A (high), K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, A. Aces only appear low when part of an A-2-3-4-5straight or straight flush. Individual card ranks are used to compare hands that contain no pairs or other special combinations, or to compare the kickers of otherwise equal hands. The ace plays low only in ace-to-five and ace-to-six lowball games, and plays high only in deuce-to-seven lowball.
- Suits have no value. The suits of the cards are mainly used in determining whether a hand fits a certain category (specifically the flush and straight flush hands). In most variants, if two players have hands that are identical except for suit, then they are tied and split the pot (so 3s 4s 5s 6s 7s does not beat 3d 4d 5d 6d 7d). Sometimes a ranking called high card by suit is used for randomly selecting a player to deal. Low card by suit usually determines the bring in bettor in stud games.
- A hand always consists of five cards. In games where more than five cards are available to each player, the best five-card combination of those cards plays.
- Hands are ranked first by category, then by individual card ranks: even the lowest qualifying hand in a certain category defeats all hands in all lower categories. The smallest two pair hand (2d 2s 3d 3c 4s), for example, defeats all hands with just one pair or high card. Only between two hands in the same category are card ranks used to break ties.
