Poker is a game of chance, and your chances of winning depend on your betting strategy.  It is very important that you have a clear understanding of what the chances of getting a good poker hand are.  This is known as poker odds.  Knowing the odds will ensure that you get to know the probability of winning with every bet that you place.
The odds of getting, say, a royal flush are quite slim, a probability of 1/650,000.  This is because there are only four ways in which a royal flush can be made.  On the other hand you can get a hand with, say, a single pair or no pair at a probability of 1/2.36 and 1/1.99 respectively, because there are and over a million ways in which you can get such a hand.
The following is a table that shows the probabilities of each type of hand that can be obtained in poker, as well as, the number of different ways the same hand can be achieved.
|
Poker hand
|
No of ways hand can come out as |
Probability of getting the hand in 5 cards |
| Royal flush | 4 | 1 : 649 740 |
| Straight flush | 36 | 1 : 72 193.33 |
| Four of one Kind | 624 | 1 : 4 165 |
| Full House | 3 744 | 1 : 694.16 |
| Flush | 5 108 | 1 : 508.80 |
| Straight | 10 200 | 1 : 254.80 |
| Three of one Kind | 54 912 | 1 : 47.32 |
| Two Pairs | 123 552 | 1 : 21.03 |
| One Pair | 1 098 240 | 1 : 2.36 |
| 5 different cards | 1 302 540 | 1 : 1.99 |
Looking at the table above, it is quite clear that the odds of getting a royal flush are rare, thus the low probability.  This is due to the fact that there are only four ways in which you can get a royal flush.  The odds of getting a straight flash seem to be better, with its probability being about nine times greater than that of getting a royal flush.  The probability of getting a straight flush is higher than that of getting a royal flush, because there are 36 different ways in which you can get a straight flush.
As you go down the table, you will find that the odds of getting the hands becomes an almost obvious event as the number of ways the hands can come out increases.  For instance, the odds of getting a hand with five different cards have a probability of 1/1.99, which is almost a 50 percent chance that you will get cards that are all different.  In the case of a royal flush, it is so hard to achieve that some players may never get a royal flush in their lifetime.
Tags: how to, play poker, probabilities, royal flush, straight flush, win online poker
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