What Is a Full House in Poker? Definition, Odds and Examples
Level 2 · Lesson 8 of 103 min read
How do you make a full house?
Three cards of one rank, two of another. Both halves have to be there.
Your pocket kings plus the board's king make three; the board's pair of sevens supplies the two. The 9♠ has nowhere to go, which is the best-five rule in its most common form — a card that looks live and is not part of your hand.
Say it trips-first: this is "kings full of sevens", never "sevens full of kings".
Which full house beats which?
Compare the three-card halves. The pair is only consulted if those are identical, which is rare enough that most players never see it happen.
Your opponent holds nines full of sevens — three nines and the same pair of sevens. Kings beat nines and the hand is over; the identical sevens are never read.
This is also why a full house is a hand you should be willing to put chips in with. It sits above a flush on the hand rankings, and it comfortably clears three of a kind — which of those two wins, and why is worth reading if the answer is not instant.
How often does a full house arrive?
About 2.6% of Hold'em hands, or roughly one in 39.
That makes it rarer than a flush, which is exactly the order the rankings put them in. Most of the ones you make will come from a pocket pair that hit a third card — a set — on a board that later paired. A pocket pair flops a set about 12% of the time; set mining covers whether chasing that is worth the price.
Quick check
You hold nines full of aces. Your opponent shows aces full of twos. Who wins?
The full house that is easiest to miss
The board hands you one and you count it as three of a kind.
Your king joins the board's two for three of a kind. The pair of nines is already face up beside it, so the five-card hand assembles itself: kings full of nines.
Players undercount this constantly, stop at "three of a kind", and fold a hand that was ahead. Read all seven cards before you decide what you have, every time — the board's own pair is part of your hand whether you noticed it or not.
You'll also run into these
- A full house on the board. When the five community cards already make one, everyone still in shows down the same hand unless someone can improve it. That is playing the board, and it splits the pot.
- "Boat" and "full boat." Both are ordinary table names for the same hand, and neither means anything different.
- Full house versus four of a kind. Quads beat it. A board that pairs is a board where somebody may have made the bigger hand.
Boat, quads and the rest of the table names are in the poker terms glossary.
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Levels 5, 9 in the app practice exactly this — each takes about two minutes.
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