Does a Flush Beat a Straight? Yes — Here's Why

By Vinoth Kanna · 31 July 2026

Rules · Poker Math

Yes. A flush beats a straight in Texas Hold’em, Omaha, five-card draw, seven-card stud, and every other standard poker game. The reason is one number: a flush shows up in 0.197% of five-card hands and a straight in 0.392% — a straight is almost exactly twice as common, so it ranks lower.

That’s the whole answer. The rest of this page shows where those numbers come from, when the rule inverts (it does, in three-card poker), and the other ranking pairs that trip people up.

The math behind it

Out of a 52-card deck there are 2,598,960 distinct five-card hands. Count the ways to make each hand and divide.

Flush — 5,108 combinations. Pick a suit (4 ways) and choose any 5 of its 13 cards: C(13,5) = 1,287. That’s 5,148 suited five-card sets. Subtract the 40 that happen to also be in sequence (they’re straight flushes and rank higher): 5,148 − 40 = 5,108, or 0.197%.

Straight — 10,200 combinations. A straight is defined by its high card, and there are 10 legal high cards (5 through ace, since A-2-3-4-5 counts with the 5 playing high). Each of the five cards can be any suit: 4⁵ = 1,024 suit assignments. That’s 10 × 1,024 = 10,240. Subtract the 40 straight flushes: 10,200, or 0.392%.

A straight is twice as likely. Rarer hand wins. That’s not a convention somebody voted on — it’s arithmetic, and it’s why the ranking chart looks the way it does.

Rank order is rarity order

Every step of the hand rankings follows the same rule. Sort all 2,598,960 hands by how often they occur and you get the ranking chart exactly, top to bottom:

Once you internalize that the chart is just a frequency table, you never have to memorize it again — you reason it out. The full derivation of every line lives in poker hand probabilities.

Why a flush feels easier to make

Most players’ intuition says “any five hearts” sounds looser than “five cards in a row,” so a flush feels like it should be the weaker hand. Two things create that illusion.

A flush needs one condition; a straight needs two — but the straight’s second condition is generous. A flush requires all five cards to share a suit, and there are only 4 suits. A straight requires five consecutive ranks, and there are 10 valid sequences — plus each card is free to be any of 4 suits. That freedom is worth 1,024× per sequence, and it’s what makes straights common.

In Hold’em you see flush draws constantly. Two suited hole cards flop a flush draw about 11% of the time, so flushes feel routine. But a flush draw isn’t a flush: you’re 35.0% to complete it by the river from the flop. Draws are frequent; completions are not.

Across all seven cards in Hold’em, the gap narrows but doesn’t close — 3.03% of players who see the river hold a flush, versus 4.62% holding a straight. The order never changes.

The exception: three-card poker inverts it

Deal three cards instead of five and the probabilities flip, so the ranking flips with them. In three-card poker, a straight beats a flush.

The reason is that shortening the hand hurts straights far more than flushes. With five cards you had 10 sequences × 1,024 suit assignments; with three cards you have 12 sequences × 64 assignments, which is a brutal cut. Meanwhile a three-card flush only needs three cards of a suit — C(13,3) = 286 per suit instead of 1,287 out of a much bigger pool. Flushes got easier relative to straights, so they rank lower.

Same principle, different deck size, opposite answer. Anyone who tells you “a straight beats a flush” isn’t necessarily wrong — they’re playing a different game.

Short-deck (six-plus) Hold’em does the same thing in the other direction. Strip out the 2s through 5s and you’re down to 36 cards: straights get much easier and flushes get harder, so a flush beats a full house there. Some short-deck rooms also rank trips above straights; that one is a house rule, so check the posted rankings before you sit.

The other pairs people confuse

Straight vs three of a kind

The straight wins. Trips occur in 2.11% of hands — over five times more often than a straight’s 0.392%. This one surprises newer players because trips “feel” powerful, and in Hold’em a flopped set usually is. But three of a kind is the more common hand, so it ranks below both the straight and the flush.

Full house vs flush

The full house wins. 3,744 combinations (0.144%) versus 5,108 (0.197%). It’s the closest call on the whole chart — a full house is only about 27% rarer than a flush — but the order is unambiguous. See full house in poker for how two full houses are compared against each other.

Flush vs flush

Compare the highest card, then the next, and so on down all five. Suits never break the tie. Ace-high flush beats king-high flush; if two players hold A-K-9-6-3 of different suits, the pot is split. In Hold’em this matters constantly, because when three cards of a suit hit the board, whoever holds the ace of that suit has “the nuts” and everyone else has a second-best flush.

Straight vs straight

Highest top card wins. Q-J-10-9-8 beats J-10-9-8-7. The lowest possible straight is A-2-3-4-5 — the “wheel” — where the ace plays low and the 5 is the high card, so the wheel loses to every other straight. More on the ace’s dual role in poker card values.

Straight flush vs flush

Not close — a straight flush is both, and there are only 36 non-royal ones in the deck. See straight flush probability for the full count.

The practical version

At the table you’re rarely comparing a made flush to a made straight in the abstract — you’re deciding whether your straight is good on a board with three of a suit. Two rules of thumb:

• Three suited cards on board is a warning, not a verdict. Someone needs two specific cards to have the flush. But if the board is suited and your opponent suddenly plays fast on the turn, your straight is often drawing to a chop at best.
• The four-flush board is worse. When four cards of one suit are out, any single card of that suit beats your straight. Straights lose money on those boards more than any other made hand.

To get a feel for how often each side actually wins, run a few dozen straight vs. flush-draw matchups through the free odds calculator. Seeing “your straight is 32% to hold” on the screen fixes the intuition faster than any chart.

Quick answers

• Does a flush beat a straight? Yes, in all standard poker games.
• Does a straight ever beat a flush? Yes — in three-card poker, where the probabilities invert.
• Does a flush beat a full house? No, except in short-deck Hold’em.
• Does a flush beat three of a kind? Yes, and so does a straight.
• What beats a flush? Full house, four of a kind, straight flush, royal flush. Nothing else.

For the rest of the ranking chart and where each hand sits, start at the strategy hub.

Keep learning: try the free poker odds calculator, memorize the hand rankings, or browse all strategy guides.