The Odds of Each Poker Hand (Five Card)

When sitting down to a poker game, it is easy to, in your mind, make up the cards that you want to see. You find yourself sitting there, begging for that four to come up or that final club to appear so you can make your hand. Sometimes those odds are against you; sometimes it will be with you. Here are the probabilities that you will end each hand with the following outcomes.

First, here are some basics. There are 2,598,960 possible combinations that you can make in a five-card game. You actually have a 50.1% chance of never getting any - not even a pair. The other half of the time, you will make something.

To start out, let's talk about getting a pair. There are over one million ways to get a pair in poker (1,098,240 ways, to be exact). This means that 42.3% of the time, you will flop a pair. In other words, every 2.36 hands, you will end up with one flop.

The next best hand is two pair. Getting two pair is drastically harder than getting one pair, but has decent odds. There are 123,552 ways of achieving two pair, which will appear 4.75% of the hands played. This means that every twenty hands, you will get a finishing hand of two pair.

But why stop there? Two pair can be beaten, right? That's why you are looking for a three of a kind. There are 54,912 ways of getting three of a kind. Sounds like a lot? Not really. It will happen around 2% of the hands you play. To be exact, the odds say it will happen once every 46 hands.

Now we get into the more serious and harder-to-achieve hands. A straight can seem easy to get, as you always seem to have possibilities. The truth is, it happens .3% of the time. This means that every 253 hands you play, on average you will only get a straight once. Note that these probabilities exclude straight flushes and a royal flush.

Next up is a flush, which would seem to have the same probability as a straight. Although they are close, it has a drastic effect on the odds. A flush occurs around .2% of the time in poker. There are just over 5,000 combinations possible. Even though this is only a .1% difference than a straight, it occurs more than 250 times less - a flush happens one out of every 507 hands.

If you have a full house as your hand, odds are pretty good you will win. However, odds aren't good that you will get a full house. Occurring .144% of the time and having 3,744 combinations, this hand will appear once every 693 hands.

What if your opponent has a full house? Well, one way of beating them is by getting four of a kind. This will happen .02% of all hands, so don't count on it. There's only 624 possible combinations, so you will have to play over 4,000 hands to get one.

Then we move into the near impossible hands. The straight flush has only 36 possible combinations. This means the odd percentage is .000013%. In other words, play around 72,000 hands of poker and you get a straight flush once.

Finally, there is a royal flush. With only four combinations, it is the rarest (by far), but guarantees you will win the hand. The odds of you receiving one are .00000154%. You must play 649,740 hands of poker in order to get one. This means that if you played poker for ten hours a day and assuming each hand took twenty seconds, you could get one in a year.

Hopefully this helps you realize that chasing after certain cards isn't a good idea. Instead, focus on what you have and play the odds right.