Poker hand strengths
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Most modern poker games use the same ranking of the final 5-card hand. See the table below.
| Hand | Description |
|---|---|
| Straight Flush | A straight and a flush |
| Full House ("A boat") | three of a kind (a "set") and two of a kind (a "pair") |
| Flush | Five cards in the same suit |
| Straight | Five sequential cards. An ace can be played as a one. |
| Three of a Kind (a "set") | Three cards of the same number |
| Two Pair | Such as Ten-Ten & 4-4 |
| A Pair | Two cards of the same number, such as jack-jack |
| No Pair | The highest card in the players hand |
Within these general rankings, straights, flushes, and no pair hands are ordered by the rank of the individual cards in the hand. Other hands are ordered first by the rank making three of a kind (if any), then by the rank(s) making two of a kind (if any), and finally by the rank of the remaining card(s) in the hand.
As it turns out, the 2,598,960 unique five-card poker hands contain only 7,462 unique ranks [1]. These ranks can be collapsed even further for a typical game, since some ranks (e.g. three aces with KQ and three aces with TJ) cannot held in two hands at the same time.
History
Poker hands did not always have this ranking.