Three Card Poker Hand Odds: Straight Flush to Pair, Exactly
Last reviewed: July 2026
Three cards from a 52-card deck make exactly 22,100 possible hands, few enough that every probability in this game is exact, no simulation required. Here’s the complete breakdown, and the two rankings that trip everyone up.
The exact frequencies
| Hand | Combinations | Probability | Roughly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Straight flush | 48 | 0.217% | 1 in 460 |
| Three of a kind | 52 | 0.235% | 1 in 425 |
| Straight | 720 | 3.26% | 1 in 31 |
| Flush | 1,096 | 4.96% | 1 in 20 |
| Pair | 3,744 | 16.94% | 1 in 5.9 |
| High card only | 16,440 | 74.39% | 3 in 4 |
Three-quarters of your hands are nothing at all. A pair arrives about once every six hands; the premium hands, trips and straight flushes, show up a couple of times in a long session, combined odds about 1 in 221.
The ranking quirk these numbers force
Notice the table’s order: a straight (720 hands) is rarer than a flush (1,096), so in Three Card Poker, a straight beats a flush, the reverse of five-card poker. Rarity sets rank. Same logic makes trips nearly as rare as a straight flush; that’s why the Pair Plus table pays 30:1 for them.
Also note the ace works both ways in straights: A-K-Q is the highest, A-2-3 (“the wheel”) the lowest.
What the odds mean for your bets
- Ante-Play: you’ll hold Q-6-4 or better about 67% of the time, that’s every hand worth playing under the optimal rule.
- Pair Plus: it wins on pair-or-better, which the table shows is only 25.6% of hands. Three losses out of four is the baseline experience, budget accordingly.
Deal a few hundred hands and watch these exact frequencies assemble themselves; the free simulator tracks every one.