Royal Flush

The Royal Flush is a legendary poker hand, beating all other hands no matter what variation of poker is played. Almost mythical in its unlikelihood to actually occur, the name royal flush is used by people around the world to symbolize rank and invincibility.

A royal flush is a ten, jack, queen, king, and ace all of the same suit. In the poker hand hierarchy, the Royal Flush is the king. However, it is not actually a separate hand of its own, but rather the highest ranking form of the ‘straight flush’. Since the straight flush is ranked based on the highest card in the group, and since Aces are the highest ranking card in poker, a royal flush is the best possible straight flush. It’s also referred to as a ‘super flush’, or a ‘nut straight flush’.

Below the straight flush is ‘four of a kind’, followed by a ‘full house’, then the regular ‘flush’, ‘straight’, ‘three of a kind’, ‘two pair’, ‘pair’, and finally the ‘high card’. The straight flush is therefore sitting pretty on top of a lot of other hands. In draw or stud poker variations, if you get a straight flush you can be certain you’ve got everyone beat. If you’re playing community card poker it isn’t too hard to tell if you’ve got the best possible straight flush. Of course, if yours is a royal flush, it’s the best hand possible and regardless of what kind of poker your playing, you can’t lose. In the extremely unlikely situation that someone else also has a royal flush, you’d tie and split the pot, since no one suit is valued more than the other.

The chance of getting a royal flush in any randomly dealt five cards is about 1 to 650,000. I have been playing poker for years and have never actually seen one. In all the time I’ve played I’ve only gotten two straight flushes, and neither of them involved any kind of royalty. Regardless, I was extremely excited each time, and it was hard to keep a good poker face. With hands like that, the game isn’t about deciding who has the best hand, its about extracting as many chips possible from your opponents. In community card poker, such as Texas Hold’em, if you have any kind of straight flush there’s a very good chance someone else has either a regular flush or a straight, so extracting a lot of chips can be easy.