Poker Flush Rules: What Counts and Who Wins

A flush is any five cards of the same suit that do not run in sequence — for example K♦ J♦ 8♦ 5♦ 2♦. It ranks fifth on poker’s ten-hand ladder: it beats a straight and everything below, and loses only to a full house or better. The rules are short, but two of them — that suits carry no rank, and that ties are settled card-by-card — decide almost every flush pot.

Rule 1: five cards, one suit

To make a flush you need five cards of a single suit — all hearts, all spades, all diamonds, or all clubs. That’s it. The cards do not need to be in order, and their spread across ranks is irrelevant to whether you have a flush at all.

• A♠ 10♠ 7♠ 4♠ 2♠ — a valid ace-high flush in spades
• Q♥ J♥ 9♥ 6♥ 3♥ — a valid queen-high flush in hearts

If those same five cards were also in sequence (say 9♥ 8♥ 7♥ 6♥ 5♥), you’d have a straight flush, which is a separate, far higher hand. A plain flush is specifically five suited cards that are not sequential.

Rule 2: suits are equal, ranks decide

Because no suit outranks another, every flush is judged purely on its card ranks. The strongest possible flush is an ace-high flush; the weakest is a seven-high flush (7-5-4-3-2 of a suit — the lowest five-card suited holding that isn’t a straight).

Rule 3: flush vs. flush ties break by high card

When two players both have a flush, you compare the highest card in each. If they tie, move to the second-highest, then the third, and so on through all five cards. This is the rule people most often get wrong.

Worked showdown. The board shows four spades: A♠ 9♠ 6♠ 3♠ K♦.

• Player A holds K♠ 2♠ → best flush is A-K-9-6-3 (using the board ace).
• Player B holds Q♠ 4♠ → best flush is A-Q-9-6-3.

Both share the ace, nine, six, and three from the board. The tie comes down to each player’s own high spade: A’s king beats B’s queen, so Player A wins. The suit is identical, so it plays no part — only the ranks do. This card-by-card logic is covered in full at does a higher flush win.

Where a flush ranks

Why a flush ranks where it does

A flush is rarer than a straight but more common than a full house, which is exactly why it sits fifth. In a 52-card deck there are 5,108 possible flushes (excluding straight flushes) out of 2,598,960 five-card hands — roughly 0.20%, or about one in every 509 hands. Compare that to 10,200 straights and 3,744 full houses:

That’s the whole logic of the ranking: rarer wins. The two matchups people ask about most are covered in detail at does a flush beat a straight and does a flush beat a full house.

Bottom line

A flush is five cards of one suit, ranked fifth of ten. Suits are equal, so a flush-vs-flush pot is decided by comparing ranks from the top card down. It beats a straight, loses to a full house, and the ace-high “nut” flush is the strongest version. Fill in the rest of the ladder at the hand rankings hub.