- All Possible Poker Hands
- Calculate The Number Of Possible Five-card Poker Hands
- Number Of Possible Poker Hands Spread
Most poker games are based on 5-card poker hands so the ranking of these hands is crucial. There can be some interesting situations arising when the game involves choosing 5 cards from 6 or more cards, but in this case we are counting 5-card hands based on holding only.
Brian Alspach
13 January 2000
One factor is whether 'the number of hands' is the number of possible hands a single person can have, or whether it's the number of possible overall board states (that is, taking into account every player's hand). If the latter, we would have to know the number of players. – Acccumulation Aug 26 at 4:45. There are more AK hands in a range of AA, KK, AK than there are AA and KK hands combined. So out of 28 possible combinations made up from AA, KK and AK, 16 of them come from AK. This means that when our opponent 3bets, the majority of the time he is holding AK and not a big pocket pair. There are a total of 3,744 poker hands that can result in a full house. This can be calculated by multiplying the total number of card choices: Total No. Of Card Choices = 13 (choices for 3 same cards) x 12 (choices for 2 cards that are the same = 156. There are 2,598,960 many possible 5-card Poker hands. Thus the probability of obtaining any one specific hand is 1 in 2,598,960 (roughly 1 in 2.6 million). The probability of obtaining a given type of hands (e.g. Three of a kind) is the number of possible hands for that type over 2,598,960. Thus this is primarily a counting exercise.
Abstract:
The types of 5-card poker hands are
All Possible Poker Hands
- straight flush
- 4-of-a-kind
- full house
- flush
- straight
- 3-of-a-kind
- two pairs
- a pair
- high card
Most poker games are based on 5-card poker hands so the ranking ofthese hands is crucial. There can be some interesting situationsarising when the game involves choosing 5 cards from 6 or more cards,but in this case we are counting 5-card hands based on holding only5 cards. The total number of 5-card poker hands is.
A straight flush is completely determined once the smallest card in thestraight flush is known. There are 40 cards eligible to be the smallestcard in a straight flush. Hence, there are 40 straight flushes.
Calculate The Number Of Possible Five-card Poker Hands
In forming a 4-of-a-kind hand, there are 13 choices for the rank ofthe quads, 1 choice for the 4 cards of the given rank, and 48 choicesfor the remaining card. This implies there are 4-of-a-kind hands.
There are 13 choices for the rank of the triple and 12 choices for therank of the pair in a full house. There are 4 ways of choosing thetriple of a given rank and 6 ways to choose the pair of the other rank.This produces full houses.
To count the number of flushes, we obtain choicesfor 5 cards in the same suit. Of these, 10 are straight flushes whoseremoval leaves 1,277 flushes of a given suit. Multiplying by 4 produces5,108 flushes.
The ranks of the cards in a straight have the form x,x+1,x+2,x+3,x+4,where x can be any of 10 ranks. There are then 4 choices for each card ofthe given ranks. This yields total choices. However,this count includes the straight flushes. Removing the 40 straightflushes leaves us with 10,200 straights.
In forming a 3-of-a-kind hand, there are 13 choices for the rank of thetriple, and there are choices for the ranks of theother 2 cards. There are 4 choices for the triple of the given rank andthere are 4 choices for each of the cards of the remaining 2 ranks.Altogether, we have 3-of-a-kind hands.
Next we consider two pairs hands. There are choices for the two ranks of the pairs. There are 6 choices for eachof the pairs, and there are 44 choices for the remaining card. Thisproduces hands of two pairs.
Now we count the number of hands with a pair. There are 13 choices forthe rank of the pair, and 6 choices for a pair of the chosen rank. Thereare choices for the ranks of the other 3 cardsand 4 choices for each of these 3 cards. We have hands with a pair.
We could determine the number of high card hands by removing the handswhich have already been counted in one of the previous categories.Instead, let us count them independently and see if the numbers sumto 2,598,960 which will serve as a check on our arithmetic.
A high card hand has 5 distinct ranks, but does not allow ranks of theform x,x+1,x+2,x+3,x+4 as that would constitute a straight. Thus, thereare possible sets of ranks from which we remove the10 sets of the form .This leaves 1,277 sets of ranks.For a given set of ranks, there are 4 choices for each cardexcept we cannot choose all in the same suit. Hence, there are1277(45-4) = 1,302,540 high card hands.
Number Of Possible Poker Hands Spread
If we sum the preceding numbers, we obtain 2,598,960 and we can be confidentthe numbers are correct.
Here is a table summarizing the number of 5-card poker hands. Theprobability is the probability of having the hand dealt to you whendealt 5 cards.
hand | number | Probability |
straight flush | 40 | .000015 |
4-of-a-kind | 624 | .00024 |
full house | 3,744 | .00144 |
flush | 5,108 | .0020 |
straight | 10,200 | .0039 |
3-of-a-kind | 54,912 | .0211 |
two pairs | 123,552 | .0475 |
pair | 1,098,240 | .4226 |
high card | 1,302,540 | .5012 |
last updated 12 January 2000