Poker Hand Rankings

Poker hand rankings are the backbone of every form of the game. Whether you sit down at a Texas Hold'em table in Manila, a Short Deck cash game online, or a Seven Card Stud table in a casino, the same question decides who wins: whose five cards rank highest? This page walks through the ten standard hands from strongest to weakest, with examples of each, then covers the details that trip people up: how the ace behaves, how ties are settled, whether suits matter, and how Short Deck and lowball games turn the whole list upside down.

If you are new to the game itself, start with our guide to poker in Asia or the Texas Hold'em rules.

The ten standard poker hands, highest to lowest

There are ten different poker hands, starting with the highest-ranking royal flush and ending with the lowly high card¹. The full list, strongest first:

1. Royal flush
2. Straight flush
3. Four of a kind
4. Full house
5. Flush
6. Straight
7. Three of a kind
8. Two pair
9. One pair
10. High card

This order is remarkably stable across the poker world. Texas Hold'em, Pot Limit Omaha, Seven Card Stud, Ultimate Texas Hold'em and Five Card Poker all use it⁶. Casino table games like Caribbean Stud and Hoiana Stud Poker rank hands from royal flush at the top down to five unrelated cards at the bottom¹⁰. Even a bomb pot, where everyone posts an ante and sees a flop immediately, is scored with the standard rankings¹².

One important caveat: these are the rankings for a standard 52-card deck. Short Deck, a variant that strips the deck to 36 cards, changes the order in the middle of the list, and lowball games reverse it entirely. Both are covered below.

What each hand means, with examples

Here is what each hand actually is, with a worked example for each, using the definitions the major poker rooms publish².

A few notes on the individual hands:

• The royal flush is simply an ace-high straight flush, the strongest hand in poker and nearly mythical in practice¹³. The straight flush is the same idea at any other point in the sequence, such as 7-6-5-4-3 all of spades².
• Four of a kind, or quads, means all four cards of one rank, such as four aces¹⁴.
• The full house combines three of a kind with a pair, for example A-A-A-K-K⁴. It sits above the flush in standard play, which is one of the facts that changes in Short Deck.
• A flush is any five cards of the same suit, in any order. K-Q-10-8-7 all of spades qualifies⁴.
• A straight is five cards of sequential value but of different suits, for example 6-7-8-9-10⁴. Every possible straight in a full deck contains either a 5 or a 10, a detail that becomes interesting when the small cards vanish in Short Deck².
• Three of a kind is three cards of one value, such as K-K-K¹³. Two pair is two separate pairs, like K-K-Q-Q-9¹³. One pair is a single pair, and high card means nothing connected at all: you win with your best single card, such as A-Q-9-8-7¹³.

Does the ace rank high or low?

The cards rank from high to low as Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and then the Ace again¹. That second ace is the key: the ace is the only card that plays at both ends of the scale.

In practice the ace is almost always high. It makes the top straight (A-K-Q-J-10), the top straight flush and the royal flush. But it can also drop to the bottom to form the "wheel": A-2-3-4-5, the smallest straight or straight flush in a full-deck game⁹. Macau's official Texas Hold'em rules state it plainly: cards rank A, K, Q, J down to 2, with the ace counting low in the 5-4-3-2-A straight¹⁷.

In Short Deck the low end of the wheel disappears. Aces still play high or low, but with no 2 through 5 in the deck, A-6-7-8-9 becomes the lowest straight and T-J-Q-K-A remains the highest⁴. Some rooms write the low straight flush as Ah-6h-7h-8h-9h⁴.

How ties are decided: kickers and split pots

When two players show the same type of hand, the higher cards win first. Two flushes compare their highest cards, two straights compare their top card, and so on. When the hand itself cannot separate them, a side card called the kicker comes into play².

The kicker applies to four of a kind, three of a kind, two pair, one pair and high card situations². A simple example: two players each hold a pair of jacks at showdown. One's remaining cards include a 10, the other's include an 8. The J-10 hand wins because the ten kicker outranks the eight¹⁹. If the players have the same ranking hand at showdown, the highest kicker is used as a tie-breaker²⁰.

If the kickers cannot decide one overall winner either, the pot is split. The players involved simply share it². In Razz, a lowball stud game, the same rule applies: if two players have the exact same hand, the pot is split²¹.

A separate kind of split happens in Hi/Lo games. In Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo, the pot may be divided between the player with the highest-ranking hand and the player with the lowest qualifying hand at the table²². The high side is scored with the traditional rankings, and the worst possible qualifying high hand there is 4-5-6-7-8²². You can read more about split-pot formats in our guide to poker variants.

Suits and card ranks: do they matter?

For hand rankings, no. In Texas Hold'em there is no ranking by suit at all: cards rank A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 regardless of suit, with the ace counting low only in the 5-4-3-2-A straight²³. Between two hands of the same type, the higher cards decide, so a king-high flush beats a queen-high flush no matter which suits they are²³.

The rare exceptions are worth knowing. A few games do put a value on suits, usually for splitting odd chips or deciding who acts first, and where they do the order is typically spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs¹. In Razz, suits are considered only to break ties for bring-in bets on third street, the forced bet that starts a hand²¹. Neither case changes which hand wins at showdown.

Card ranks themselves are fixed: A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, with the ace flexible at the bottom as described above¹. In Casino War, a much simpler game, aces are simply the highest cards and suits do not matter at all²⁴.

Short Deck basics: 36 cards, antes and the missing wheel

Short Deck, also called Six Plus Hold'em, gets its name from its deck: all the 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s are removed, leaving 36 cards, only ranks 6 and up³. The game uses one 36-card deck, shuffled after every hand²⁷.

The structure otherwise looks like Texas Hold'em: each player receives two hole cards, five community cards follow, and everyone makes the best five-card hand²⁹. There are four betting rounds, the preflop, flop, turn and river³. The big difference in the betting is that most Short Deck games have no blinds and use an ante-based system instead, with the player on the button posting a larger second ante, typically about 2 to 4 times the normal ante³. The minimum raise preflop is equal to double the value of the ante³. Tables typically seat 2 to 6 players²⁷.

The rankings change because the math changes. With fewer cards, some hands become harder to make than others, and the list adjusts:

• Royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind stay on top, in that order⁴.
• Flush moves above full house. This is the headline difference: in Short Deck a flush beats a full house³. In standard poker it is the other way around.
• Straight sits below full house but above three of a kind in the common online ordering⁴. Some operators rank straights above flushes as well²⁸, and some live venues consider three of a kind stronger than a straight, though that is not the case online at PartyPoker¹⁸.
• The rest of the list, three of a kind (where applicable), two pair, one pair and high card, follows in the usual order⁴.

The missing wheel is the other big adjustment. The ace-to-five wheel straight is not available in Short Deck because the 2, 3, 4 and 5 do not exist²⁸. The lowest straight becomes the nine-high A-6-7-8-9, which takes some getting used to³.

The smaller deck also shifts the odds in ways you will feel at the table. You flop a set with a pocket pair 17% of the time versus 12% in traditional No Limit Hold'em³. A flush draw on the flop completes by the river only 30% of the time in Short Deck, against 35% in Hold'em, while an open-ended straight draw on the flop makes it a little over 45% of the time, up sharply from 31.5% in Hold'em³. That is the logic behind the ranking swap: flushes got rarer, straights got easier.

If you want the full rules of the variant, see our page on Short Deck (Six Plus) Hold'em rules.

Lowball: the rankings completely reversed

Lowball poker is the set of poker games where the objective is to make the lowest hand possible⁵. At showdown, the lowest hand according to the variant's ranking system wins the pot, and the hand rankings are completely reversed compared to traditional poker⁵.

So the standard list flips: high card, the worst hand in normal poker, becomes the goal, and pairs, three of a kind and full houses become liabilities. Under Ace-to-Five low rules, straights and flushes are not possible, which makes 5-4-3-2-A high card hands the lowest¹. In other words, the wheel that is the smallest straight in Hold'em is the best possible hand in Ace-to-Five lowball.

Razz is the best-known lowball form, a Seven Card Stud variant where the lowest hand wins throughout²¹. Hi/Lo games split the difference: the pot is divided between the best high hand and the best low hand, as in Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo²². You can read more about these formats in our guide to poker variants.

Making the best five-card hand from seven cards

A hand in poker consists of five cards, no more². But in the most popular games you are dealt or given more than five to work with, and you choose your best five.

In Texas Hold'em, the game is all about making the best five-card hand from the seven cards available: your own two hole cards plus the five community cards². In Omaha, you must use exactly two personal cards and exactly three community cards to build your five-card hand³¹. In Seven Card Stud, players compete by making their best five-card hand from the seven cards they are dealt over the course of a round³².

The practical consequence is that your hand is not simply what you are dealt; it is the best five of the seven. Two players can even make the exact same five-card hand entirely from the community cards, in which case the pot is split as described above. Side bets in casino games work the same way: the Three Card Poker Six Card Bonus pays based on the best five-card poker hand that can be made by combining the player's cards and the dealer's three-card hand³³.

Casino table games use different lists

If you play poker against the house rather than against other players, the rankings can differ, and it pays to check the specific game's list before you bet.

Three Card Poker is the clearest example. Since each hand consists of only three cards, its rankings are different from standard poker: straight flush, three of a kind, straight, flush, pair, high card³³. Three of a kind sits above the straight flush's usual neighbors because with three cards the combinations change, and flushes rank below straights.

Four Card Poker has its own ladder too, running down to high card at rank 8³⁴. Pai Gow Poker asks you to arrange seven cards into a five-card hand and a two-card hand, with the rule that the rear five-card hand must be stronger than the front two-card hand³⁵. The two-card front hand is either a pair or no pair, scored by card value with aces high³⁵.

Caribbean Stud Poker uses the standard rankings but adds a qualification rule: the dealer's hand must contain an ace and a king or better to qualify, with A-K-4-3-2 the lowest qualifying hand and A-Q-J-10-9 the highest non-qualifying hand³⁶. Ultimate Texas Hold'em uses exactly the same hand rankings as standard Texas Hold'em⁷.

Casino poker derivatives in Asia add their own twists. Texas House Poker and Five Card Poker, both spread in Indian casinos, rank hands in the familiar order from royal flush down to high card, with A-2-3-4-5 the smallest straight⁹. Video poker variants go further: Double Double Bonus Poker divides four of a kind by its kicker, the remaining unrelated cards, to set hands with higher payouts³⁷. And in the Japanese game Kachikachi, a tie is called a "hiki": the dealer stays and all chips carry over to the next game³⁸.

The lesson is simple: the ten-hand list above is the default, but it is a default, not a law. Short Deck swaps the flush and full house, lowball flips the whole table, and the three-card and four-card casino games have their own shorter ladders. Before you put chips in, confirm which list the game is using. Our guide to casino poker games against the house covers those variants in detail.