Hand odds

[fox_91]

I was doing some thinking today after getting beat by a nut flush again... why are flushes ranked so highly in poker? Now i know its a 5 card suited hand and whatnot, but is it really higher than 3 of a kind? or a straight?

I don't have all the math worked out, but thinking about it...13 suited cards, and you can start with 2 of them. along with 5 on the table.. now of course there are other people at the table and whatnot so the odds of getting suited cards varry with the # of people... but lets think of somthing like 3 of a kind. only 4 of any one card in the deck, so you are 100% to get one copy of one of the 13 sets, but then the odds of getting a second or a third of that one copy are much lower, at best your looking at 1/51, then 1/50 provided you are the only one drawing cards. So i guess what i don't get is why haveing 5 of 13 suited cards in any combo, is better than getting 3 of one card in a deck?

The same thing with a straight. ok you are 100% to get the first card of a straight, but then depending which of the 13 cards you get the odds of you getting sequential cards to form a straight are very low. like if you got a 10 well then you have to draw either down or up into a straight, which limits the cards you can have to get a working hand. but a flush doesn't care.

I suppose its a rant of sorts, losing out to nut flushes when your holding 3 aces or somthing that you see rarely. is there a good list of the odd's breakdowns? I know 9 people on a table makes the odds worse, but am i the only one thinking that 3 of a kind should carry more weight than it does?

[Sid Lambert]

Flushes are ranked higher because in any given random set of 7 cards, a flush is less likely than a straight, which in turn is less likely than 3 of a kind.

Concerning 'unseen' cards...aka other cards that your opponents have or are left in the deck...they are all unknown...whether or not your opponents actually have some of your outs doesnt matter cuz its still unknown...see our page on Unseen and exposed cards.....so when there are 9 people at a table, your chances of making any given hand does not change relative to if you were playing heads up, unless of course you can read them, or see their cards...it *does* make it more likely that your hand will not be the winning hand though of course...

I dont wanna go through the math again, perhaps somebody w/ more patience will, but that is a lot of calculations if you want to compare flushes, straights, and 3 of a kind, but I can refer you to our excellent Odds Calculators and our Calculating Odds pages...this kinda falls under trivia, since most of the time you only care about how many outs you have...

also you have to be careful about when you make both a straight and a flush....or a straight and 3 of a kind, or a flush and 3 of a kind, and whether or not to include those in your statistics, although those don't change the final numbers too much

[fox_91]

thanks for the reply... i figured tat the odds of a flush are proably worse overall, but man it seems like they happen so often too. and poor you sitting there with 3 of a kind feeling like you got somthing, then some little bugger gets a flush on the river, and they never had anything but a hope... guess thats why its gambling... but man is it frustrating.

[davepoker]

What doesnt make sense to me is why a flush beats a straight.
open end straight has 8 outs to fill up
Four flush has 9 cards to fill up
therefore it seems that a straight should win, or am i not considering something in this equation.

[Sid Lambert]

your chances of getting a flush draw are worse than the chances of getting a straight draw...plus remember, your hole cards are only suited slightly less than 1/3 of the time