Flop Odds in Texas Hold'em: Sets, Flushes and Pocket Pairs

A pocket pair turns into a set or better on the flop about 11.8% of the time, roughly once every eight and a half tries. Two suited cards flop a complete flush less than 1% of the time, though they flop a four-card flush draw nearly 11% of the time. And before any of that, you are dealt a pocket pair once in 17 hands and pocket aces once in 221.

The flop is the biggest single moment in a Hold'em hand: three cards arrive at once, and the strength of most starting hands changes completely. The chart and explanations below show where the familiar numbers come from.

Poker odds chart: the deal and the flop

How the flop numbers are counted

Once your two cards are dealt, 50 cards remain unseen. Other players' cards are hidden from you, so for your own calculation they count as unseen too. Three of those 50 cards form the flop, and there are 19,600 equally likely flops.

What are the odds of flopping a set?

Holding a pair, say two sevens, leaves two more sevens among the 50 unseen cards. The easy route is to count the flops containing neither of them: three cards chosen from the other 48 gives 17,296 flops. That is 88.2% of all flops, so at least one seven arrives on the other 11.8%. The figure includes the rare flops carrying both remaining sevens (quads) and those that also bring a pair (a full house).

Seeing all five board cards lifts the chance of making at least a set to about 19.2%, a little under one time in five.

What are the odds of flopping a flush?

With two hearts in hand, 11 hearts remain among the 50 unseen cards. A flush on the flop needs all three flop cards to be hearts: C(11, 3) = 165 flops out of 19,600, or 0.84%. A flush draw, meaning exactly two hearts plus one other card, can arrive in 55 × 39 = 2,145 ways, which is 10.9% of flops.

Straights from connected cards

Eight-nine can make four different straights: five to nine, six to ten, seven to jack and eight to queen. Each needs three particular ranks on the flop, and each rank comes in four suits, so each straight can arrive in 4 × 4 × 4 = 64 ways. Four straights give 256 flops, about 1.3%. Gapped hands such as eight-ten fit into fewer straights and so flop one less often.

Pairing a hole card

With two unpaired cards, such as queen-nine, three queens and three nines remain unseen. Flops containing none of those six cards number 13,244, so at least one of them shows up on about 32.4% of flops. Two times in three, an unpaired hand misses the flop completely, which is worth remembering before getting attached to any starting hand.

Preflop: how the deal numbers work

There are 1,326 possible two-card hands. Pocket pairs account for 78 of them (13 ranks with 6 combos each), which is exactly 1 in 17. A single pair such as aces has 6 combos, so 1 in 221. Suited hands take 312 of the 1,326, a little under a quarter. Our page on poker combinatorics explains these counts and shows how cards you can see change them.

Reading the chart sensibly

• Flop odds describe your hand, not the result. Flopping a set does not guarantee winning the pot, and missing does not mean losing it.
• Most flops miss most hands. Patience with that is part of the game, not bad luck.
• Odds and probability are different formats. An 11.8% chance is about 7.5 to 1 against.
• Omaha works differently. With four hole cards and the rule of using exactly two, the counts change; see our Omaha rules guide.

At the very top of the hand rankings, the odds of a royal flush follow exactly the same counting method.

Real-money Hold'em is for players aged 18 and over. Treat buy-ins as entertainment spending with a firm ceiling, and check whether online poker is permitted where you are before joining a table.