Straight

A straight is five cards in a row, in any mix of suits, like 9♣ 8♥ 7♦ 6♠ 5♣.

Highest and lowest straight

• The highest straight is A-K-Q-J-T, sometimes called Broadway.
• The lowest is 5-4-3-2-A, called the wheel. Here the ace plays low.
• A straight can’t wrap around the ace: Q-K-A-2-3 is not a straight.

There are ten possible straights, from five-high up to ace-high.

Where a straight ranks

A straight is the sixth-best hand in poker. It beats three of a kind, two pair, one pair and high card. It loses to a flush, a full house, four of a kind and a straight flush. So a straight does not beat a flush; see does a flush beat a straight.

A straight ranks below a flush because it’s more common: with seven cards, you make a straight about 4.6% of the time and a flush about 3.0%.

Straight vs straight

The straight with the higher top card wins: 9-8-7-6-5 beats 8-7-6-5-4. Two straights with the same top card split the pot, because suits never count. In Hold’em, if the board itself is a straight and nobody has a higher one, everyone still in the hand splits the pot.

Straight draws

Draw	Example	Outs	Gets there by the river (from the flop)
Open-ended	You hold 9-8 on a 7-6-2 flop	8	31.5%
Gutshot	You hold 9-8 on a 6-5-2 flop	4	16.5%