Fri, 04/22/2011 – 14:19 – PokerPages Staff

When betting or thinking of placing your bets in poker, it’s important that you know the basic poker rules of odds. Our guide shows you how often hands come up when drawn straight at random from the pack.

Poker bets often depend greatly on odds and they will affect all rounds of poker betting. Many top players say they don’t use odds, but the vast majority have some grip on how the poker rules concerning when to bet are determined by odds.

A pair is by far the easiest hand to draw in a game of 5 card stud or if drawing 5 cards from a standard deck of 52 at random. It has a one in 2.4 chance of occurring. Next up is the two pair, which is almost ten times less likely to happen, occurring once in 20. It’s worth noting that two pair occurs a little more often in Hold ‘em due to the community card arrangements, but odds for that game are much harder to calculate.

Third most likely of poker hands to appear is the three of a kind. There’s a 46 to 1 chance of three cards of the same index appearing- approaching the odds of drawing a card at random and picking it correctly at around 2%, generally speaking. Next is a big leap to drawing a straight right out of the deck. This will happen every one in 254 times- pretty rare. However, a flush can beat that as it’ll only show up when drawn straight off one in 508 times- a chance of approximately 0.2%, or around 10 times less likely than a three of a kind. A full house has odds of 693 to 1 of appearing. The odds again take a big leap here.

A four of a kind will occur one in 4,164 times, which is around 10 times less likely than a flush and 100 times less likely than a three of a kind. Statistically 100 three of a kinds will be drawn from a deck before a four of a kind will be. But a straight flush can beat that with odds of 72,192 to 1- pretty long odds, and only beaten by the almost impossible to obtain royal flush, where 10 J Q K A appear all of the same suit. This occurs a total of one in 649,739 times.

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