Which Poker Hand Wins?

Best five of seven — the only rule that matters

At showdown in Texas Hold'em, each player has seven cards available: their two hole cards plus the five community cards. Their hand is the single best five-card combination from those seven. Everything else follows from this:

• → You can use both, one, or none of your hole cards. Using none is called "playing the board" — if the board is a ten-high straight and neither hole card extends it, that straight IS your hand.
• → The sixth and seventh cards never count. There is no "my leftover card was higher" tiebreak. If two players' best five cards match rank-for-rank, the pot splits — full stop.
• → Cards speak. In every properly run game, the hand is read from the cards on the table, not from what a player announces. Mis-calling your hand doesn't forfeit it; tabling the winner wins even if you didn't realize it.
• → Categories rank first, tiebreaks second. A flush beats any straight, no matter how high the straight is. Only when both hands are in the same category do the individual card ranks get compared — see our hand rankings chart for the full order with tie-breakers.

Kicker rules — when the side card decides

A kickeris any card in your best five that isn't part of the made hand. With A♥K♣ on a board of A♦Q♣J♠7♥3♦, your hand is a pair of aces with K-Q-J behind it. An opponent with A♣9♠ also has a pair of aces — but their best five is A-A-Q-J-9. The first difference is your king vs their queen, so you win. That's the entire kicker rule: compare the five cards in order, highest first; the first difference decides.

Two consequences trip people up:

• → Kickers can be counterfeited. If the board runs out high cards, your kicker may not make the top five at all. Holding A-2 on an A-K-Q-J board, your 2 never plays — anyone else with an ace chops (or beats you with a ten).
• → Full-category hands have no kicker. Straights, flushes, and full houses already use five cards, so there's nothing left to kick. Two identical straights always chop — a side ace changes nothing.

The disputes that come up every home game

Two pair vs two pair

Compare the higher pair first, then the lower pair, then the kicker. Aces and threes beats kings and queens — the biggest pair wins even though kings-queens "sounds" stronger. And watch for the counterfeit: if you hold a small pocket pair as your second pair and the board double-pairs above it, your two pair can dissolve into "board plays" territory.

Flush vs flush

The highest flush card wins; if those match, compare the second, and so on through all five. Suits never break the tie— there is no "spades beat hearts" at showdown. With four suited cards on the board, whoever holds the single highest card of that suit takes it, which is why the bare ace of the flush suit is such a powerful card.

Straight vs straight

Higher top card wins. The wheel (A-2-3-4-5) is the loweststraight — the ace plays low, so it loses to 2-3-4-5-6. When the straight is entirely on the board, everyone still in the hand chops unless someone's hole card extends it to a higher straight.

Split pots

The pot splits whenever the best five cards are identical in rank across players. If the chips don't divide evenly, the odd chip conventionally goes to the first player left of the button. Splitting gets genuinely tricky once side pots are involved — our side pot calculator handles the multi-way all-in math.

Still arguing after the cards are face up? Enter the exact hands in the checker above — it applies these rules mechanically and shows which one decided the pot. For the before-the-river version of the question ("who was ahead?"), use the odds calculator to get win percentages instead of a verdict.

Frequently asked questions