In poker, there are a total of 10 different hand rankings. These are the traditional hand rankings that are used in the majority of poker games, including Texas Hold’em, Omaha and Seven Card Stud. The highest ranking hand is the royal flush, followed by the straight flush.
Then there are four of a kind, a full house, a flush, a straight, three of a kind, two pair and finally a single pair. These hand rankings can be memorized easily enough, but understanding the odds of being dealt each hand is vital if you want to be a winning player.
The first thing to understand is that being dealt a hand in poker is not like rolling dice where each number has an equal chance of coming up. In poker, the chances of being dealt different hands depends on how many cards are left in the deck and how many players are at the table.
For example, if you’re playing Texas Hold’em with nine other players at a full table, then the chances of being dealt a specific hand go down significantly because there are more players to compete against for that hand.
The odds of being dealt a royal flush in poker are approximately 1 in 650,000 hands. This means that if you’re playing 25 hands per hour, you can expect to see a royal flush once every 26 hours on average.
The odds of being dealt a straight flush are about 1 in 72,000 hands so you can expect to see one every 8 hours or so when playing 25 hands per hour.
Four of a kind is slightly less rare than a straight flush with odds of around 1 in 4200 hands. This means that you should see one every 2 hours when playing 25 hands per hour.
A full house is even more common with odds of 1 in 700 hands which gives you an average frequency of one every 4 hours when playing 25 hands per hour.
A flush is slightly less common than a full house with odds of 1 in 500 hands which gives you an average frequency of one every 3 hours when playing 25 hands per hour. A straight is more common than a flush with odds of 1 in 250 which gives you an average frequency of one every 90 minutes when playing 25 hands per hour.
Three of a kind is even more common than a straight with odds of 1 in 47 which gives you an average frequency of one every 20 minutes when playing 25 hands per hour.
Two pair is also more common than three of a kind with odds of 1 in 21 which gives you an average frequency of one every 5 minutes when playing 25 hands per hour. Finally, the most common hand in poker is a single pair with odds of 1 in 2 which means that you can expect to be dealt this hand once every other hand on average when playing poker.
Now that we’ve looked at the frequencies for each type of hand, let’s take a look at what these numbers mean for your chances of winning at poker. If we assume that all players have an equal chance of winning any given hand (which is not always the case but it’s close enough for our purposes), then we can calculate the probability for each type of hand using the following formula:
Probability = Number Of Ways To Win / Total Number Of Possible Outcomes
For example, the probability for being dealt a royal flush would be:
1 (the number ways to win) / 650,000 (the total number possible outcomes) = 0% or 0 to 1 odds
Similarly, we can calculate the probability for each type poker hand as follows:
Royal Flush: 0% or 0 to 1 odds
Straight Flush: 0% or 0 to 1 odds
Four Of A Kind: 0% or 0 to 1 odds
Full House: 3% or 1 to 33 odds
Flush: 5% or 1 to 20 odds
Straight: 8% or 1 to 12.5 odds
Three Of A Kind: 11% or 1 to 9 odds
Two Pair: 17% or 1 to 5.9odds
Pair: 50% or evens
As we can see from these probabilities, certain types poker hands are much more likely to occur than others. For instance, you will be dealt two pair approximately once every five minutes when playing 25 hands per hour while it will take over two hours on average before seeing four foofa kind. This knowledge can be helpful when making decisions during gameplay as well as when trying to calculate pot sizes and implied probabilities preflop.
