Does a Full House Beat a Straight In Poker? All You Need To Know

Does a full house beat a straight in poker? A common question that many beginners ask. The answer although is quite simple. However, there are a few things that one has to know about. Poker is an amazing game and it has several different variations. You can play poker in a variety of ways. Even pro poker players don’t know about all the different variations that exist. For newbies, things might get a little complex initially but then with time and with experience, they will for sure evolve as pro poker players.

A full house is considered to be one of the strongest poker hands and whether it can beat a straight or not, that is our question of interest. In this article, we will dig deeper and find out more about poker hand rankings and the fundamentals you need to know about poker. So, without waiting any further, let’s hop into it.

Poker Hand Rankings

We all know that there are 52 cards in a standard deck. And keeping that in mind, it is easy to calculate that there are a total of  2,598,960 different combinations that are possible to form. Now that we have this number, it is easy to estimate the probability of forming different hand ranks. But what are they actually and how many poker hands are there in total? To get answers to these questions, keep reading this article and once you are done reading, you will have a solid 95% understanding of Poker. Worried about the remaining 5%? That you will get will experience.

It should be noted that there are a total of 10 poker hand rankings. Knowing about poker hand rankings is crucial for every player newbie or experienced. The more you are aware of these hand ranks, the greater will be your chances of winning. If you don’t know much about hand ranks, then you are in the right place because, in this article, we will be discussing that in detail. The strongest poker hand is the Royal Flush. The Royal Flush is the rarest poker hand to get. The probability of getting a Royal Flush is just one in 649,377 which makes it the rarest poker hand. It should be noted that the Royal Flush is comprised of a 10, a Queen, an Ace, a Jack, and a King, all belonging to the same suit.

Next in line is the Straight Flush which is another strong poker hand. The probability of getting this flush is higher than the Royal Flush but then again, the percentage is quite low. There are just one in 72,193 chances of getting a Straight Flush. The Straight Flush is comprised of just 5 cards, all belonging to the same suit.

After the Straight Flush, we have Four of a kind, Full house, Flush, Straight, Three of a kind, Two pair, One Pair, and lastly, High Card.

A Full house is one of the strongest poker hands. It is comprised of three of a kind and a pair, all cards belonging to the same suit. Three of a kind is a combination of three cards, all from the same rank. Whereas a pair is a combination of two cards from the same rank. Thus, the combination of three of a kind and a pair is known as a Full house. It is calculated that the probability of a Full house is one in six hundred and ninety-three which is one of the rarest hand rankings.

Lastly, the High card is considered to be the weakest hand rank because the probability percentage of forming a High card is very high. It is very likely to get a High card while playing poker.

There is one in 0.99 chance of getting a High Card. Thus, making it the most common hand combination. A High card is simply a combination of cards that are not similar to each other. It means that this hand does not have any matching cards.

Does Full house beat a Straight in Poker?

Knowing the fundamentals of poker is very important. To play a good game and end up winning big, players must understand poker hand rankings. After fully understanding the concept behind hand rankings, things become quite easy. At this point, a player will be aware of the different hand rankings and will have a clear understanding of the strongest and weakest hand rankings. It means that the player will also be aware of what beats what when it comes to different variations of poker hands. As discussed above, a Full house is nothing but a combination of three of a kind and a pair, all cards belonging to the same suit. It should be noted that a pair is simply a combination of two cards from the same rank. Thus, we can say that a Full house is a combination of five cards in total, two forming a pair because of the same ranks, and three from the same suit forming three of a kind.

On the contrary, a Straight is nothing but a combination of five cards that are not from the same suit but are in numerical order. Straight is also one of the rarest poker hands.

Now that we know what a Full house and a Straight is, it is time to get back to the main question i.e. does a Full house beat a Straight? This is a question which we still need to answer. Although a Straight is a strong poker hand, a Full house can beat it easily. A Full house is a stronger hand rank as compared to a Straight and the main reason is that the probability of forming a Full house is very unlikely compared to that of a Straight one. Therefore, it is because of this reason that makes a Full house stronger than a Straight.

Examples of a Full House

Below are some pictorial examples that will help you understand what a Full house looks like.

Here is the first example of a Full house.

Here is another example of a Full house. It can be seen that a Full house is a combination of a pair and three of a kind.

Conclusion: Why does a Full house beat a Straight in Poker?

Poker is an awesome game with tons of variations. The more you know the basics of this game, the greater will be your chances of winning. Thus, it is important to not only know about poker hand rankings but also find out which hand is stronger and which one is weaker. Not only this but knowing what beats what when it comes to hand rankings is also something crucial. In the discussion above, we discussed in detail the various hand rankings that exist and also found out that a Full house can beat a Straight Flush. The reason is simply that it is easy to get a Straight Flush than get a Full house. In other words, there are close to 3750 possible ways only to form a Full house. On the contrary, there are over 10,000 possible ways to form a Straight.

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