Texas Hold'em Hands: Rankings in Order

Texas Hold’em has 10 possible hands. From strongest to weakest they run: royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, and high card. You make your best five-card hand from your two hole cards plus the five community cards.

All 10 hands, ranked

How you build a hand from seven cards

You’re dealt two hole cards, and five community cards hit the board. Your hand is the best five-card combination out of those seven. You can use:

• Both hole cards plus three from the board,
• One hole card plus four from the board, or
• Zero hole cards — “playing the board” — if the five community cards make your best hand (in which case you split with anyone still in).

You never have to use your hole cards, and you never use more than five cards total.

How ties break: the kicker

When two players make the same hand type, the highest card ranks decide it. The extra cards that break the tie are called kickers.

• Two pair vs. two pair: highest pair wins; if equal, the second pair; if still equal, the fifth-card kicker.
• One pair vs. one pair: higher pair wins; if equal, compare kickers one at a time.
• Flush vs. flush: highest card in the flush wins, then the next, and so on.

Worked example: reading the board

You hold A♠ 5♠. The board comes K♠ 9♠ 2♠ 7♦ J♣.

• Three of your suit are on the board plus two in your hand = five spades. You have a flush.
• It’s the nut flush — ace-high, the best possible flush here — because you hold the A♠.
• Even if an opponent has a lower spade, your ace outranks it. You win the flush battle.

That’s the whole skill of reading hands: scan the board for the strongest five-card combo you can assemble, then figure out what could beat it.

How often each hand shows up

Part of why the order is what it is: rarer hands rank higher. Here’s roughly how often each makes by the river when you play a hand to the end — useful for calibrating how excited to get:

• One pair is by far the most common made hand — most pots are won with a pair or two pair.
• A flush or straight is a genuinely strong holding; you’ll often have the best hand.
• Full house and up are rare enough that they almost always win the pot.
• Four of a kind and straight flushes may go months between sightings in a casual game.

The practical lesson: don’t wait for monsters. Pots are won every hand, and most of them go to modest holdings played well.

Playing the board vs. using your cards

A subtle but important rule: you use the best five cards available, and sometimes that’s the five community cards themselves. If the board reads A♠ K♠ Q♠ J♠ 10♠, everyone still in the hand has a royal flush — nobody’s hole cards can beat it, so the pot is split. More often, though, your two hole cards let you build something the board alone can’t, which is the entire point of holding cards nobody else can see.

Quick facts about the rankings

• Suits are equal. No suit outranks another; they only matter for flushes.
• The wheel counts. A-2-3-4-5 is a valid low straight, where the ace plays low.
• Rarer means stronger. The harder a hand is to make, the higher it ranks — that’s the logic behind the whole order. The odds behind each hand are in our poker odds and math hub.

Where to go next

Knowing hand strength is step one; knowing which two cards to play before the flop is step two — see the best starting hands to play. For the deeper reference on every ranking across all poker games, visit the hand rankings hub, and see the rankings in the flow of a full deal in the rules walkthrough. Back to the Texas Hold’em hub for everything else.