What Beats A Straight Flush In Cards
- Straight Flush In Cards
- Whats A Straight Flush
- What Beats A Straight Flush
- Does Straight Beat Flush
- Poker Flush Beats A Straight
- What Beats A Straight Flush In Cards Against
As a boy, anytime the words “not fair” were uttered by me or my siblings the response from our father was an unwavering “The only fair is the State Fair and it only comes around once a year”.
Straight flush A high card is the very least you can have in the game of poker. If you have no pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, etc., then the highest card in your hand is considered to be decisive. The hand above, in which the best card is a king and there is no other combination of poker hand, is known as “king-high”. In short, flush can always beat a straight hand. A standard poker hand has five cards, and every poker hand is ranked in a set order. The higher the rank is, the less chance you’ll get. The high your hand's rank, the better because two pairs can always beat one pair, and a flush will always beat a straight. A Straight Flush ranks as the top winning poker hands. In fact, a Straight Flush can only be beaten by another Straight Flush and a Royal Flush. The ranking is based on the highest card in the. A flush is any five cards of the same suit. An ace-high flush is higher (and beats) a king-high flush, regardless of the other cards in each hand. When two or more players hold a flush, the hands are compared card-to-card until one hand wins (the highest next card wins, such as when A-7-6-3-2 beats A-7-5-4-3).
Well, in the poker world “unfair” seems to come around plenty.
Sort of like death and taxes being certainties, in poker you’re certain to get bad beats. Also, similar to death and taxes because there goes your money and here comes that dead inside feeling in your stomach.
In elementary terms, a bad beat is when a poker hand that’s favored to win, loses to an underdog hand that catches cards to beat it.
For example, in a no-limit hold’em game or tourney, you go all-in pre-flop with the best possible at that moment; Ace, Ace.
Imagine one player wasn’t dissuaded by your huge bet and calls, going all-in behind you. They flip over 5 & 6 of clubs. The 5 & 6 of clubs isn’t a hand to go all-in with pre-flop. Of course they justify it in their mind because after all they’re suited.
So, we’ve got your aces against 5/6 suited. You are thrilled to see their hand, and because the pot is huge thanks to their call, you’re basically reaching to the middle of the table to start raking them up and stacking. What you fail to realize, being a beginner, is that it’s not over til it’s over.
Now, while your “pocket rockets’ look like a cinch and get pulse up, unfortunately they’re only about a 77% favorite to win. That means for every 4 hands you go all-in with pocket aces against a 5/6 of the same suit, you’re going to lose once.
Don’t Define Me
The term “Bad Beat” isn’t defined by Webster. What constitutes a bad beat in poker is therefore subject to interpretation. Generally a bad beat is considered to occur when a hand that is an overwhelming favorite loses to an inferior hand that gets needed cards to win.
Say you go all-in before the flop with pocket 9s and are called by Ace and Queen of hearts.
In this scenario, you and your 9s will win 52% of the time. Even after the flop and turn are dealt, your 9s may be holding steady. Then bam, river card is a Queen and you lose.
That’s a common beat, incredibly common. It’s essentially a coin toss, so regaling your fellow poker players with the tale of your defeat will not garner any sympathy. Who am I kidding? Neither will tales of a legitimate bad beat.
Bad Beats need to be a slightly more miraculous and painful than simply losing when you’re a slight favorite to win. Going all-in with pocket 10s and losing to pocket 5s, would be a bad beat. Mostly because your 10s are an 80% favorite to win the hand.
It’s important to keep in mind, especially for your mental well-being, that even a somewhat strong hand of say, Ace/King against a Queen/Ten hand will only win about 66% of the time.
Particularly brutal bad beats come when you get all your money into the pot when you’re ahead on the flop or turn. After all, if four of the five community cards are already dealt and you’re way ahead, it’s easy to assume that one remaining river card won’t slaughter you.
Unfortunately, it can and it often does exactly that. Say you started the hand with a pocket pair, (say pocket 7’s), and end up getting three of a kind after the turn. And let’s say your opponent has a flush draw – he has two hearts in his hand, and there are two hearts on the board. With only the river card to come, your set of sevens, will win 84% of the time.
Those times when that winning flush card comes for your opponent, which it will 16% of the time, can be so incredibly disheartening.
It’ll make you want to yell obscenities and storm out of the casino. When in reality, you were just a participant in a soulless, cold, uncaring mathematical string of probabilities.
Straight Flush In Cards
Another devastating bad beat comes when a player goes “runner runner” on you. What this means is that you are well ahead after the flop, but the resulting turn and river cards give your opponent two cards they need to snatch victory away from you.
A runner-runner bad beat would be when you flop a full house, only to see your opponent go runner runner to catch the exact two cards he needs to make a full house that is higher than your full house.
More commonly, you’ll experience a runner-runner bad beat when someone catches running cards to make an odd straight, or a flush on you.
While losing cold hard cash to a bad beat in a regular game hurts, bad beats are especially painful when you experience one during poker tournaments.
One minute you’re sitting there Ace/Ace dreaming of that final table and significant check and the next you’re sulking in the parking lot asking yourself, “What happened?”.
Does It Hurt
“The bubble” is the term for when a poker tournament is at the point where all remaining players will be paid winnings. Consequently, the “bubble boy” or the person “on the bubble” is the player who finished just one spot away from the money.
In the World Series of Poker Main Event, they usually pay a certain percentage of the finishers – typically around the remaining 10% of the player pool.
So with, say, 8,000 entrants, the last 800 remaining players get paid. The guy with the unfortunate distinction of finishing in 801st place, the bubble boy, receives nothing.
As you can imagine, suffering a bad beat to become the bubble boy is not only rare, but perhaps the cruelest bad beat of all.
I’d like to note here that the most incredible and unique bad beats have their own name, “coolers.” The definition of a cooler hand in poker, is when a rock solid hand loses to an even more amazing hand.
As an example, one cooler would be when a player with 4 of a kind, loses to a straight flush. These are the bad beats that are typical qualifying hands to win the large bad beat jackpots found in poker rooms and casinos around the country.
A rare and especially hateful, but not impossible bad beat is a combination cooler/runner-runner hand in which a player flops 4 of a kind, only to see his opponent catch runner-runner cards to achieve a higher 4 of a kind.
While this is a bad beat, the sting will be lightened as the loser would win a big chunk of cash as part of the bad beat jackpot.
What if he loses this way in a card room without a bad beat jackpot? Well, he’s got a legitimate bad beat story to tell.
Conclusion
Bad beats have been around since poker’s humble beginnings and good or bad they’ll be here to the end.
Some professional players, see Phil Hellmuth, are notorious for his pronounced reactions to bad beats.
However, enduring a bad beat means that the losing player or victim was “getting the money in good” and in most instances would win by playing the same hand the same way.
Therefore, the more stoic poker players accept bad beats as an unpleasant but necessary drawback to a tactic that pays an overwhelming majority of the time.
There’s a line from possibly the most popular poker movie of all-time, Rounders that goes “Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.”
I can confirm that while I am in every sense a recreational player, I’ve won and lost some big pots and the ones I lost stay with me more than the wins.
In fact, I took a particular beat holding Ace/King suited and flopped the nut flush. My opponent called my all-in bet and hit a full house on the river. I walked straight to my car, drove the 8 hours home only stopping once for gas and didn’t leave my house for a week.
That loss hurt so bad that I didn’t step through the doors of another casino for over 4 years. You can learn from my misfortune and my mistakes.
Poker is fun, if it weren’t you wouldn’t play. So, for every bad break there’s a good break coming your way. That’s one of the beautiful sides of poker, the math never changes.
Don’t go on tilt because an opponent caught a huge break. There are only 52 cards in a deck and one of them had to come up.
Knowing what beats what in poker or Texas Hold’em is an important early step in learning the game. To help you out, I have provided for you an attractive printable or downloadable “cheat sheet” for both 5 card hand rankings as well as top 24 pre-flop starting hands.
Poker hands ranked from best to worst:
- Royal Flush
- Straight Flush
- Four of a Kind
- Full House
- Flush
- Straight
- Three of a Kind
- Two Pair
- One Pair
- High Card
To make things easier on you, I have included some handy charts that can be used to reference during play or even printed out.
Poker Hand Rankings Chart
Never forget what beats what again. Feel free to save this to your phone/tablet/computer or print the chart out.
Click below to download a high-quality PDF that includes a printable copy of both the showdown and pre-flop hand rankings.
The Top 24 Hold’Em Starting Hand Rankings
To help you out, I have also included the top 24 no-limit hold’em starting hands to give you a further idea of what beats what in poker. I based this list on both raw equities as well as post-flop playability.
I have used over 10 years of experience in both tournaments and cash games to compile this info. You get to benefit from my hard work!
How These Hands Were Determined
I took a look at a few of the pre-flop hand ranking charts out there and, while most appeared to get it right for the most part, there seemed to be something off.
The thing is, everyone always does pretty well on the top 5 or 6 hands. However, after that things get a bit murkier
So, what really matters when it comes to weighing hand strength? I decided to take a close look at the problem. Using the knowledge I’ve gained over the past few years, I tried to come up with a better way of codifying hand rankings.
Determining the Overall Playability of Each Hand
I decided to go about it from a logical standpoint. When deciding whether to play a hand or not, what are the factors a strong player considers before acting
So, I decided that there are basically two main factors to consider in determining the strength of a particular pre-flop hand. And, since equity is the tool we use to rank the value of hands I just had to figure out what type of equities matter most and then apply it to each factor
Once I was able to define which equities to consider, it just took a bit of math.
1. Pre-Flop Equity
The first equity I decided to factor in is a hand’s raw pre-flop equity. I mean, sometimes you need to get all-in before the flop, right?
Whats A Straight Flush
Of course, some hands will get all-in more frequently than others but for the sake of simplicity, raw equity against a strong range will give us a decent enough metric to come up with a comparative ranking.
2. Post-Flop Equity
Secondly, we need to factor in how a hand does post-flop. There’s no doubt, that certain hands play much better after the flop than others.
To calculate how well a hand does after the flop I looked at what post-flop hands tend to get all-in most of the time in a post-flop scenario. This includes the strongest made hands, including top pair and better, as well as strong draws.
Once I was able to figure out what hands are likely to get all-in, I just had to figure out the equity of every hand versus that range on a random flop.
Compiling the Final List
Doing these kinds of calculations by hand would be extremely difficult and time-consuming. Luckily, there is a software program called Cardrunner’s EV that does the math for me.
After I figured out both the raw pre-flop equity and the likely flop equity of each hand, I just used excel to average them. That data was used to compile the rankings.
Here are the final equity percentages:
Which Poker Starting Hand Ranges Should I Use?
Knowing which hands to open raise is important to your success. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.
Free Basic Poker Strategy Charts
I have built charts that provide you profitable opening ranges from every position. As a bonus, the charts also include what to do at every decision point possible for playing a 20 to 40 big blind stack
The guide will give you an excellent starting point for playing No-Limit Texas Hold’em and will get you off on the right foot by allowing you to play fundamentally sound poker right now!
What Beats A Straight Flush
FAQ
What if my opponent and I have the same hand at showdown ?
If more than one player has the same hand then you have to follow the tie-breaker rules to determine the winner.
If two or more players have a flush or straight
In the case where two players have a flush or straight, the person who has the highest card in their hand wins. For example, T9876 beats 76543.
If two or more players have a full house
In the case of multiple full houses, the player with the highest “trips” as part of their full house wins. For example, TTT22 beats 555AA.
What if two or more players have the same pair or two pair?
If multiple players have exactly the same two pair, the highest kicker is used to determine the winner. For example, JJ66Q beats JJ66T.
The same process is used for one-pair. The next highest kicker is used. If that is the same, you use the next highest kicker. So on and so forth until the tie is broken. For example, AAK85 beats AAK84.
Who wins if more than one person has the same high card?
Similarly to one pair and two-pair hands, you use the next highest kicker to determine the winner. You keep moving on to the next kicker until a winner is determined. For example, KT763 beats KT753.
Which is better, trips or two-pair?
Three of a kind beats two-pair. It also beats a pair and high card.
Which is better, a flush or a straight?
A flush beats a straight. It also beats three of a kind, two pair, a pair, and high card.
What is the worst hand in poker?
The worst hand against multiple players is 72 offsuit. The worst hand heads-up is 32o.
What are the odds of getting a Royal Flush in Texas Hold’em?
Does Straight Beat Flush
A royal flush is extremely rare. You can only expect to get a royal flush once every 650,000 hands. That doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed. Personally, I have played well over 5 million hands and have only had one royal using both cards.
Poker Flush Beats A Straight
Final Thoughts
What Beats A Straight Flush In Cards Against
I hope this article has helped you learn more about how hand rankings work in poker. If you want to learn about basic poker strategy, be sure to check out my detailed no-limit hold’em basic tutorial.