Who Wins This Poker Hand?

In Texas Hold’em every player has seven cards at showdown: two hole cards and five community cards. Only five of them count. The calculator tries all 21 ways to choose five cards from seven, scores each one, and keeps the strongest. That five-card hand is the only thing compared against the other players. Your hole cards are not special; you may use both, one, or neither of them.

Hands are compared in two steps. First comes the category, from high card up to a straight flush, using the order on our poker hand rankings chart. A higher category always wins, so a flush beats any straight and a full house beats any flush. Only when two hands share a category does the calculator look further, at the specific ranks inside the hand and then at the kickers.

The result box gives the winner first, then the reason. A winning line such as “Player 1 wins — Two Pair (Aces & Sevens) with a Queen kicker” tells you the category, the made part of the hand and, when it mattered, the kicker that broke the tie. Below it, each player’s best five cards are shown in full and the two leftover cards are greyed out and marked Not used. That label ends most table arguments: a card outside the best five cannot help, however high it is.

The evaluation is exact. There is no simulation and no guessing about unseen cards, because the board is complete. The same code also powers the explanations further down this page, so every worked example you read here is the answer the who wins calculator gives when you open it.

A kicker is a card that is not part of the made hand but still counts toward the five. Poker kicker rules apply only when two hands land in the same category and the made part is identical. The table lists the tie-break order for every category; each row is explained underneath.

Straight flush and straight. Only the top card counts. A nine-high straight loses to a ten-high straight, and two straights with the same top card split the pot even if one player’s hole cards look stronger. The wheel, A-2-3-4-5, is a five-high straight; the ace plays low there and cannot make it any higher.

Four of a kind. Higher quads win. When the four of a kind sits on the board, every player shares it, so the single kicker decides. An ace in your hand wins outright; if the fifth board card is higher than everyone’s hole cards, the board plays and the pot is split.

Full house. The three of a kind is compared first and the pair only matters if the trips match. Sevens full of twos beats sixes full of aces. There is no kicker in a full house, because all five cards are already used.

Flush. Compare the highest card, then the second, and so on down to the fifth. Suits never break the tie. When four flush cards are on the board, a single suited hole card decides the winner, and a low one often does not play at all.

Three of a kind. Higher trips win. With the same trips, usually when the trips are on the board, the two highest remaining cards are compared as kickers, first one and then the other.

Two pair. The top pair is compared first, then the second pair, then one kicker. Because only one kicker plays, a strong second hole card is often irrelevant: if the board already supplies a higher fifth card, both players use it and split.

One pair and high card. With the same pair, three kickers are compared in order. With no pair, all five cards are compared from the top. These are the most common ties in Hold Em, and the place where the Not used label in the who wins poker calculator does most of its work.

A pot is split when two or more players have best five-card hands of exactly the same ranks. The pot is divided equally among them. There are three situations you will see again and again at a home game, and the calculator labels each one.

The board plays when the five community cards are already the best hand anyone can make. A straight on the board that nobody can extend, a flush nobody can improve, or a full house that beats every holding are typical. Everyone still in the hand splits, even a player holding pocket aces. The calculator says “The board plays” and marks both of each player’s hole cards as Not used.

Players can also tie with hands that use their hole cards. Suppose the board is A K 7 7 2, one player holds A Q and another holds A J. Both make aces and sevens, and the fifth card is the board’s king for both of them. The queen and the jack never play, so the pot is split. Swap the king for a nine and the queen kicker wins, which is the hand the who wins calculator opens with.

When a pot cannot be divided evenly, the leftover chip usually goes to the first tied winner clockwise from the button. The calculator does not know the button position, so its side-pot table hands odd chips out in seat order from Player 1 and says so next to the pot. Apply your room’s own rule if it is different.

These are the hands that start arguments in Hold’em home games and in poker chat groups. Each heading opens the same deal in the calculator, so you can change a card and watch the result move.

When a player is all-in for less than the others, they can only win what they matched. Open “All-in with different stacks? Split the pot” under the result, enter the total each player put in, and the calculator builds the main pot and every side pot, then awards each one using the showdown it has just ranked. Here is a three-handed example: Player 1 is all-in for 40 chips, Players 2 and 3 each put in 100. Player 1 has the best hand, Player 3 the second best.

Main pot. Each player matched Player 1’s 40 chips, so the main pot is 40 × 3 = 120. All three players are eligible and Player 1 has the best hand, so Player 1 wins all 120.

Side pot. Players 2 and 3 each put in 60 more, making a side pot of 60 × 2 = 120. Player 1 cannot win any of it. Between the two players who can, Player 3 holds the better hand and takes the side pot, even though Player 3 lost to Player 1.

If one player bets more than anyone can call, the extra layer has only one eligible player. The calculator lists it as uncalled chips returned rather than as a pot won. Players who folded are not modelled: enter only the players who reached showdown.

FlopKit wrote and maintains this who wins poker calculator. The evaluator was checked against every one of the 2,598,960 possible five-card hands: it reproduces the standard count for each category and finds exactly 7,462 distinct hand values, the known total for a 52-card deck. Rankings follow standard high-hand rules for Texas Hold’em; there are no wild cards and no low or hi-lo split games.

The tool needs all five board cards. It answers who wins a finished hand; it does not estimate your chances on the flop or turn. For the price of a call before the river, use the pot odds calculator. Card choices stay in your browser; a shared hand link contains only the card codes.

Think a result is wrong? Copy the hand link and send it through the correction contact with the result you expected. The link restores the exact table, so we can reproduce it in one click.