Royal Flush Odds: How Rare Is a Royal Flush?

By Jason Thompson · Updated 11 October 2026

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Quick answer: The odds of a royal flush are 1 in 649,740 in five-card poker, about 0.000154%. With seven cards, as in Texas Hold’em if you stay to the river, they improve to 1 in 30,940. In video poker (9/6 Jacks or Better, played with the best strategy) you hit one about once every 40,390 hands. A royal flush is the rarest and best hand in poker.

Last checked: 11 October 2026, when we worked out every figure on this page ourselves from the number of possible hands and checked each one against Wikipedia’s poker probability tables and the Wizard of Odds.

What are the odds of getting a royal flush?

A royal flush is A, K, Q, J and 10, all of the same suit. There are only four of them in a deck, one per suit. Five cards can be dealt in 2,598,960 different ways, so the chance of being dealt a royal flush is 4 in 2,598,960, or 1 in 649,740.

To put that in context, if you were dealt one five-card hand every minute, day and night, you would wait about 15 months on average for a royal flush. It is the top hand in our poker hand rankings for exactly that reason: it is the hardest one to make.

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What are the odds of a royal flush in Texas Hold’em?

In Texas Hold’em you make your best five-card hand from seven cards: your two hole cards and the five shared cards on the board. More cards means more ways to make it. There are 133,784,560 possible seven-card hands, and 4,324 of them contain a royal flush. That gives odds of 1 in 30,940 if you stay in the hand all the way to the river.

Your starting cards change the odds a lot:

• Two suited cards from 10 to ace (such as A♠ K♠ or J♥ 10♥): the flop gives you a royal flush 1 time in 19,600. By the river it is 1 in 1,960, because the three cards you need can land anywhere among the five on the board.
• One card from 10 to ace, or two unsuited ones: you can still make a royal, but you need four of the five board cards to fit, which is much less likely.
• Two cards below 10: your only royal flush would be all five cards on the board, about 1 in 529,690. Everyone at the table would share it.

In practice most players fold most hands before the river, so a real Hold’em player sees a royal flush far less often than the 1 in 30,940 figure suggests. For the odds that matter more in everyday play, such as hitting a flush draw, see our poker maths guide and the pot odds calculator.

How rare is a royal flush compared with other hands?

This table shows how often the strongest hands come up with five cards and with seven cards. The straight flush rows leave out the royal flush, which is technically the highest straight flush.

So a straight flush is about nine times as common as a royal flush in five-card poker: there are 36 straight flushes that are not royal (nine in each suit) against just four royals.

How do you work out the odds of a royal flush?

You count the hands that win and divide by every possible hand.

1. Count every five-card hand. Choosing 5 cards from 52 gives 52 × 51 × 50 × 49 × 48 ÷ (5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1) = 2,598,960 hands.
2. Count the royal flushes. There is one per suit, so four.
3. Divide. 2,598,960 ÷ 4 = 649,740. The odds are 1 in 649,740.

For seven cards, there are 133,784,560 hands. A hand contains a royal flush when it holds the five royal cards of one suit plus any two of the other 47 cards. That is 1,081 hands per suit, or 4,324 in total, and 133,784,560 ÷ 4,324 = 30,940.

What are the odds of a royal flush in video poker?

Video poker gives you a draw: you keep the cards you want and replace the rest. That makes a royal flush far more likely than in five-card poker. In 9/6 Jacks or Better played with the best strategy, you hit one about once every 40,390 hands. The best strategy chases royals hard, for example by breaking up a paying pair to keep four cards to a royal.

Most Jacks or Better machines pay 250 coins per coin for a royal flush, but 4,000 coins on a five-coin bet. That bonus is why video poker players are told to bet the maximum coins: with fewer coins the game returns less. If five coins is too much for your budget, play a lower coin size instead.

How long does it take to hit a royal flush?

These are averages. You could hit one tomorrow, or never.

• Video poker: at 600 hands an hour, one royal every 40,390 hands is about 67 hours of play.
• Live Texas Hold’em: at around 30 hands an hour, and even if you saw every hand to the river, 30,940 hands is over 1,000 hours. Because you fold most hands, it is usually much longer.
• Five cards with no draw (as in Let It Ride): 649,740 hands. Most people never see one this way.

A long run without a royal does not make one “due”. Each hand is independent, a point we explain in our guide to the gambler’s fallacy.

Which casino games pay the most for a royal flush?

Several table poker games pay a big multiple for a royal flush, because it is so rare:

• Let It Ride pays 1,000:1 on the standard pay table, with odds of 1 in 649,740 since you use five cards.
• Ultimate Texas Hold’em pays 500:1 on the Blind bet and usually 50:1 on the Trips side bet, with seven-card odds of 1 in 30,940.
• Progressive side bets on some tables pay the whole jackpot meter for a royal flush. Their value depends on the size of the meter.

A big royal flush payout does not mean a good bet. In Let It Ride, for example, some tables cut the royal payout but raise the full house and flush pays, and those tables have a lower house edge because the smaller hands come up far more often.

How we checked this

• We worked out the five-card and seven-card odds ourselves by counting hands, as shown above, and compared them with the tables on Wikipedia’s poker probability page and the Wizard of Odds poker odds page. They match.
• The video poker figure (about 1 in 40,390 for 9/6 Jacks or Better with the best strategy) comes from the Wizard of Odds Jacks or Better tables (1 in 40,391) and 888casino’s video poker odds guide (1 in 40,390).
• The Hold’em figures for suited high cards and the “how long” times are our own sums from the same counts.
• Let It Ride and Ultimate Texas Hold’em payouts come from our own guides to those games, where each pay table was checked against two sources.

Figures last checked: 11 October 2026. Gambling laws differ from country to country. Check what is legal where you live before you play, and only bet what you can afford to lose.

Royal flush odds FAQs

How rare is a royal flush?

Very rare. You are dealt one about once in 649,740 five-card hands, and you make one about once in 30,940 seven-card hands. It is the rarest hand in standard poker.

What are the odds of a royal flush in Texas Hold’em?

1 in 30,940 if you stay to the river. With two suited cards from 10 to ace, the odds improve to 1 in 1,960 by the river and 1 in 19,600 on the flop.

Is a royal flush a straight flush?

Yes. A royal flush is the highest possible straight flush, ace high. Most odds tables list it separately because it is the top hand.

What are the odds of a straight flush?

1 in 72,193 in five-card poker and 1 in 3,590 with seven cards, not counting royal flushes. Counting them, it is 1 in 64,974 with five cards and 1 in 3,217 with seven.

Can two players have a royal flush in the same hand?

In Texas Hold’em, only if the royal flush is all five cards on the board, so every player still in the hand shares it and splits the pot. Two different royal flushes cannot happen in Hold’em, because each one needs at least three board cards of its suit and the board has only five cards.

How many hands of video poker until a royal flush?

About 40,390 hands on average in 9/6 Jacks or Better with the best strategy. That is roughly 67 hours at 600 hands an hour.