What does a full house beat in poker? What hand beats it?

Three extremely powerful poker hands are full houses, flushes, and straights. Is a full house, however, better than a straight? Is a full house better than a flush?

Yes, a full house beats both a straight and a flush.

Let me explain why a full house beats a straight and a flush in poker.

Why Does a Full House Beat a Flush or a Straight?

A complete house is towards the top of the list in hand strength in Texas Hold’em, Five Card Draw, or any other poker variant that uses normal poker hand rankings.

Straights and flushes, on the other hand, are powerful hands. So, why does a full house always win? The answer can be found in mathematics.

Because full houses happen less frequently than flushes or straights, they rank higher in the hand rankings. With a typical 52-card deck, there are “only” 3,744 ways to make a full house. When you consider the 10,200 different ways to create a straight and the 5,108 different ways to make a flush, it’s easy to see why full houses are ranked higher.

The Math Behind a Full House

A full house, also known as a full boat, is essentially three-of-a-kind and a pair in the same hand. When a complete house is dealt, even newbies to poker are likely to recognize that they have a powerful hand.

Here are a couple of examples of full houses:

10 ♦10 ♣10 ♥Q ♣Q ♥

The hand above is a full house, with tens of queens. A complete house can also be made with the following hand:

5♠5♥5♦A♣A♠

Fives full of threes, or fives over threes, is the name given to this hand. Keep in mind that the power of the hand versus other complete houses is determined by the three-of-a-kind part of the full house. For example, if the two complete houses above were to compete, the tens full of queens would win in online poker.

There are 156 different ways to draw a full house with a regular 52-card deck. However, this does not account for suits.

For example, in the example above, our 5♠5♥5♦A♣A♠ complete house indicates one distinct full house, independent of the suits. There are 24 possible ways to draw any particular complete house when suits are taken into account.

We can draw a full house from a 52-card deck in 3,744 different ways by multiplying 156 different full house hands by 24 possible suit combinations. With all five community cards on the board, the likelihood of making a full house in Texas Hold’em, the world’s most popular poker game, is 2.6 percent.

Poker Hands Ranked Highest to Lowest

Hand Type	Explanation
Royal Flush	A straight containing all five cards of the same suit from ten to ace. All suits are ranked similarly in poker.
Straight Flush	Any straight with the same suit on all five cards.
Four of a Kind	Any four cards of the same rank can be played. If two players have the same Four of a Kind (on the board), the winner is determined by the larger fifth card (the “kicker”).
Full House	Three cards of the same rank combined with two cards of the same rank can be used. In our example, “Aces full of Kings” is a larger complete house than “Kings full of Aces.”
Flush	Any five cards in a row from the same suit (not consecutive). The rank of the flush is determined by the highest card of the five. The highest possible flush in our case is an Ace-high flush.
Straight	Any five cards of different suits in a row. Aces can be used as both a high and low card. In our case, we have a five-high straight, which is the shortest straight conceivable.
Three of a Kind	Three cards of the same rank are allowed. The finest conceivable three of a kind in our scenario is three-of-a-kind Aces with a King and a Queen as side cards.
Two Pair	Any two cards of the same rank, plus two more cards of the same rank. The best conceivable two-pair, Aces and Kings, is shown in our example. The two-rank pair is determined by the highest pair of the two.
One Pair	Any two cards of the same rank can be played together. Our example shows the best one-pair hand attainable.
High Card	Any hand that isn’t one of the aforementioned. The best possible high-card hand is shown in our example.

What does a full house beat in poker? What hand beats it?

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