Does a full house beat a flush?
Yes — a full house beats a flush in poker.
Does a full house beat a flush?
This is one of the most common poker ranking questions, and the answer never changes: a full house wins against a flush. Because a full house is rarer and ranks higher than a flush, it wins the showdown every single time, no matter the suits or the cards inside each hand.
Try it yourself: use our free poker equity calculator to compare any two hands and see the exact odds.
Why
A full house and a flush tend to fight it out on paired boards that also carry a flush draw — a texture that comes up often enough that most regulars have a story about losing a big pot with the flush. The reason the boat wins comes down to how the two hands are built: a full house needs three cards of one rank plus a matching pair, while a flush just needs five cards of one suit with no pairing requirement at all. That extra structural demand makes a full house the rarer hand — about 1 in 694 five-card deals versus about 1 in 509 for a flush — and rarity is exactly what the ranking rewards.
Example
One player shows K♠ K♥ K♦ 7♣ 7♠ (a full house); the other shows A♠ J♠ 8♠ 5♠ 2♠ (a flush). A full house outranks a flush, so the full house wins.
A second example
Board: J♦ J♣ 4♦ 4♠ 2♦. Player A holds A♦ K♦ and rivers an ace-high diamond flush (A-K-J-4-2). Player B holds J♥ 4♥ and makes jacks full of fours (three jacks, two fours) using the board’s pairs plus their own. The full house takes it, even against a flush topped by an ace.
In real play
Paired boards are where full houses live, so when the board pairs and also shows three cards of one suit, do not assume the flush is automatically best. Ask whether your opponent’s range includes a card that pairs the board — if it does, a boat is live. This is one of the classic slow-play traps in Hold’em: players with a set often check a paired flop hoping a flush draw bets into their eventual full house on the river. Check the exact odds for any two hands in the equity calculator rather than assuming the flashier-looking hand is ahead. It is also why experienced players size their bets carefully on paired, suited boards — overbetting a flush there can push a full house into raising instead of folding.
How each hand is built
Here is exactly what each hand requires, side by side, so there is no ambiguity about why one outranks the other:
- Full House: three cards of one rank plus a separate pair.
- Flush: five cards of one suit, not in sequence.
Odds and frequency
How often each hand is dealt in a random five-card poker hand (a rarer hand always outranks a more common one):
- Full House: 1 in 694
- Flush: 1 in 509
The numbers line up with the ranking: a full house is the rarer hand of the two, which is exactly why it ranks higher and wins the showdown.
Full poker hand ranking
For reference, here are all ten hand categories from highest to lowest:
- Royal Flush
- Straight Flush
- Four of a Kind
- Full House
- Flush
- Straight
- Three of a Kind
- Two Pair
- One Pair
- High Card
Key takeaway
Players often confuse the two because both are five-card hands, but the ranking is fixed: a full house is always the winner. When in doubt, work down the ranking chart from the top and the higher hand always takes the pot.
Read the full poker hand rankings chart, see our guides to Flush, or test any matchup in the poker equity calculator.
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