A quick look at the poker hand rankings chart tells us that a full house beats a flush in Texas Hold’em and most other popular poker variants.
The one poker game that’s been gaining popularity lately in which a flush beats a full house is Short Deck Poker, also known as 6+ Hold’em, in which making a flush is harder than making a full house.
In all other cases, a full house will beat a flush, regardless of how high a flush is or what suit the cards in a flush are.
The reason, of course, stems from the fact full houses are harder to come by in poker than flushes, and you can find out more about the odds of both by staying on this page and reading the rest of the text.
Why Does a Full House Beat a Flush?
Poker hand rankings clearly define that any full house beats any flush in the game of poker, but you may be wondering why that’s the case.
The answer, of course, is that a full house is simply harder to make than a flush with the two hole cards and five community cards in play.
Like all other hands on the chart, full houses and flushes are ranked by how uncommon they are, with the least common hands ranked the highest.
Like a full house, a flush also requires the player to use five cards, but any five cards of the same suite can be used to make a flush, while more particular cards must be used to make a full house.
In fact, a full house is so hard to come by that only premium poker hands like four-of-a-kind, a straight flush, and a royal flush beat a full house in classic poker games.
If you want to find out exactly how hard these hands are to make, check out the table below that details the odds of making a full house or a flush on the flop, turn, and river:
| Chances To | Full House | Flush |
| Make it on the Flop | 0.09% – 0.98% | 0% – 0.82% |
| Make it on the Turn | 8.5% – 15% | 19.2% |
| Make it on the River | 8.7% – 21.7% | 19.6% |
How Often Will You Make a Full House?
A full house is among the highest-ranked poker hands, with only quads, straight flush, and royal flushes beating it.
You can make a full house with any starting hand, but pocket pairs have a significantly higher chance of making a full house on the flop than unpaired hands.
About one in a hundred pocket pairs will turn into a full house on the flop, with the exact odds closer to 0.98% of the time you are dealt a pocket pair.
On the other hand, unpaired hands make a full house on the flop about 0.09% of the time, which means only one in a thousand random unpaired hands will make a flopped full house.
Keep in mind that a full house is only possible on paired boards, so you will need the flop to be paired if you are to have any chance of having a full house right then and there.
If you make two pair or three-of-a-kind on the flop, you will have a chance of improving to a full house on later streets as well.
Your two-pair combos will turn into a full house about 8.5% of the time on the turn and 8.7% of the time on the river, for a combined chance of just over 17%.
Three-of-a-kind combos will give you an even higher chance of turning or rivering a full house, with about 15% of the turns and 21% of the rivers improving your hand in such situations.
While a flopped full house is not a very likely hand to make, turning or rivering one once you have flopped two pairs, trips, or a set is a reasonably likely outcome.
How Often Will You Make a Flush?
Making a flush in Texas Hold’em is a great feeling, but one that comes around quite often and is not all that uncommon.
Of course, a flush is not a hand that guarantees victory, and the ranking of the cards with which you have made a flush can make a very big difference.
If you start with two suited cards in the hole, you will have a 0.82% chance of flopping a flush outright, giving you what is likely to be the best hand on the flop.
If those odds seem a little low, a much higher number of flops will give you a flush draw, with suited cards making a flush draw almost 11% of the time and offsuit combos making a flush draw 2.24% of the time.
If you make a flush draw on the flop, you will have a little over 19% chance to hit one of your nine outs on both turn and river, for a grand total of over 38% chance to make your flush.
With such favorable odds, flush draws are some of the best drawing hands in all of poker, allowing you to play aggressive strategy and often win pots without even making your hand.
One thing to be careful of is making flushes with small suited cards, as this often results in flush-over-flush scenarios that can cost you a lot of money.