Poker Hand Probabilities: How Often You Actually Make Each Hand
Level 4 · Lesson 6 of 84 min read
Which poker hand is the rarest?
The royal flush. About 0.003% of Hold'em hands finish as one.
Straight flushes as a group arrive ~0.03% of the time, one hand in 3,200. Every royal is also a straight flush, so those two figures overlap and are never added together. Four of a kind is the next rung down the poker hand rankings: ~0.17%, about one hand in 600.
How often do you finish with each hand?
Every figure below is what you finish with by the river. That counts all seven cards: your two plus the five on the board. The figures come from scoring all 133,784,560 seven-card hands with the same evaluator that grades the in-app puzzles.
| Hand | How often you finish with it (all seven cards) |
|---|---|
| One pair | ~44% |
| Two pair | ~23% |
| High card | ~17% — one hand in 6 |
| Three of a kind | ~4.8% — one hand in 21 |
| Straight | ~4.6% — one hand in 22 |
| Flush | ~3% — one hand in 33 |
| Full house | ~2.6% — one hand in 39 |
| Four of a kind | ~0.17% — one hand in 600 |
| Straight flush | ~0.03% — one hand in 3,200 |
| Royal flush | ~0.003% — one hand in 31,000 |
Those are averages across every hand played to the river. For the chance that your own hand improves, count outs instead.
Why don't the rankings match the probabilities?
Nine of the ten follow the frequencies exactly. From one pair upward, every step up the chart is a step down in frequency. High card breaks the pattern. It ranks last, and it is still not the most common finish. About 17% of hands end that way, behind one pair at ~44% and two pair at ~23%.
The ranking order was fixed on five-card hands, where high card is the largest group of all. Hold'em deals seven and lets you keep the best five. Those two extra cards find a pair far more often than not.
What are the odds of being dealt a specific hand?
These are deal probabilities — what arrives in your two hole cards, before any community card is turned. They answer a different question from the table above, which counts finished hands.
A pocket pair is dealt about 5.9% of the time: one hand in 17.
Pocket aces specifically are one deal in 220 (~0.45%), and ace-king of any suits about one in 83 (~1.2%). Two suited cards are the common one at ~23.5% — one hand in four.
A pair in your hand is not three of a kind yet. 6♥ 6♦ still needs one of the other two 6s, which is what set mining chases.
Quick check
Which happens more often — being dealt a pocket pair, or finishing a hand as three of a kind?
Keep learning: best starting hands poker turns the deal figures above into a list of hands worth playing. Any term here is defined in the poker terms glossary.
Frequently asked questions
Do these probabilities change with more players at the table?
No. Your seven cards come from the same deck whoever else is sitting there. Your chance of finishing with a flush is identical heads-up and three-handed. What changes is the chance that somebody else finished with one too. The same made hand is worth less at a full table.