You are mathmatically more likely to hit a flush than a straight.


In any poker game involving 5 cards or more here is how it works out.
13 suited cards
13 cards in numerical order.

(ignore the straight flush draw. pretend for this example there is no such thing as a straight flush)

you get:


You now need 4 clubs to make a flush or 4 consecutive cards begining with (suit insignificant) to as long as they connect. There are 12 clubs in the deck and 32 cards to help make a straight draw.

next card is
now you need 3 clubs to make a flush, or running , , , , , . So now there are 11 clubs to make a flush or 24 cards to help make a straight draw.

Next card is a

now 2 clubs help to make a flush and any , , , makes a straight draw.
So there are now 10 clubs to help make a flush and 16 cards (that have to line up correctly) to make a straight draw.

Next card is a
You now have 9 clubs to make a flush or 8 cards to make a straight.

On the final card you are obviously more likely to make your flush.

To make the straight building up from the first card you had more cards to help but they had to be connected so its not truly 32 cards. The math is a little too complex from the beginning for me to figure out but the final card is obvious. The odds favor the flush.

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I thought this too, then I looked it up:

The odds of getting a straight are 1 in 131.8

The odds of getting a flush are 1 in 273.1

That's true (of course)...

Interesting note:
In Iranian poker (and some other Middle Easterns play it like that too)(Including Antonio Esfandiari when he was a kid) straight is better than flush.

That is because in their version of poker, they take all the cards from 2 to 7 out fo the deck (either that or all cards from A to 6) so the chances of getting a straight is less than flush...

Cheers,

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Are those odds taking the game of hold'em into account, as opposed to five card draw, etc? Your odds of making a certain hand depend on the total number of cards you have available, to make your hand. I like statistics, but I haven't done the math for myself, so I don't know for sure.

I will say this - in hold'em, you will see more flushes because people make their decisions to chase or drop a draw based on the flop. And after the flop, a flush draw is significantly more likely to hit than an open-ended straight draw.

Plus, I personally believe that a flush is easier to see, and therefore is chased more often. That doesn't increase its odds at all, but your mind will remember the times you see a flush hit, and forget (or never know) the times a flush draw is folded or missed.

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