Short Deck Poker Hand Odds & Hand Strength

Short deck poker (also called six-plus Hold’em) strips the 2s through 5s from the deck, leaving 36 cards and only nine per suit. That single change rewrites the hand odds: a flush beats a full house, straights arrive constantly, and drawing math no longer matches Hold’em. Understanding these frequencies is the whole game.

This guide assumes you know the short deck poker rules; here we cover the odds and hand strength behind them.

How the 36-card deck changes hand frequencies

Out of 376,992 possible five-card hands from the short deck, here is how often each one appears — and why the ranking order shifts.

Hand	Frequency	Chance
Straight flush	24	0.006%
Four of a kind	288	0.076%
Flush	480	0.127%
Full house	1,728	0.458%
Straight	6,120	1.62%
Three of a kind	16,128	4.28%
Two pair	36,288	9.63%
One pair	193,536	51.3%
High card	122,400	32.5%

Compare this to a full deck and two things jump out. Flushes (480) are now rarer than full houses (1,728), so the flush is promoted above the full house. And four of a kind (288) is rarer than a flush, so quads stay near the top. The common short deck ranking runs: straight flush, four of a kind, flush, full house, straight, and then the pairs — matching these frequencies exactly.

Why the ranking flips

The logic is purely about scarcity. Removing the 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s takes four cards from every suit, so each suit drops from thirteen cards to nine. Making a five-card flush from nine cards is much harder than from thirteen — hence flushes plummet in frequency and rise in rank.

Straights move the opposite way. The ranks are packed tighter, and because the ace can play low (A-6-7-8-9 is a straight), connecting cards are everywhere. Straights become the most common “big” hand at about 1.6%, so they win far smaller pots than in Hold’em. A straight in short deck is a starting point, not a monster.

Drawing odds: straights up, flushes down

The deck size changes your equity on draws even when the raw out count is the same.

• Open-ended straight draw: still eight outs, but they come from a 36-card deck rather than 52, so each remaining unseen card is more likely to be one of your outs. Your draw carries more equity per card than in Hold’em, which makes semi-bluffing straight draws highly profitable.
• Flush draw: with only nine cards per suit, a four-flush has fewer outs than in a full deck. Flush draws complete less often, so they are worth less than their Hold’em cousins and should be played more carefully.

This is the strategic heart of short deck: chase and barrel straight draws aggressively, but treat flush draws with respect rather than automatic confidence. The short deck poker strategy guide builds these ideas into full lines.

Hand strength in practice

Put the odds together and a clear hierarchy of value emerges:

1. Sets and better win big — they are hard to make and hard to read.
2. Flushes are premium because of their scarcity; the nut flush is close to unbeatable.
3. Straights are common, so respect them but do not overvalue them, especially low straights.
4. Two pair is weaker than it feels, because sets and straights are around so often.

The practical result: play suited and connected hands that make the top of this list, apply pressure with straight draws, and demand strong holdings before committing your stack. Fold high-card hands that miss — over half of all hands are just a pair or worse.

One frequency underlines the whole approach: two pair or better appears in only about 16% of complete five-card hands from the short deck, so a big made hand is scarcer than beginners assume. That scarcity is why patience pays and why the players who win are the ones chasing the nut flushes, sets, and top-end straights rather than firing off chips with a naked pair or a low-end straight that a bigger hand quietly beats.

Master these frequencies, then combine them with betting and position in the short deck poker strategy guide, or explore more formats in the poker variants hub.