Across regular poker and video poker, the royal flush sits at the top of every payout ladder. 

It is a five-card ten-to-ace straight in one suit and the rarest standard hand in the game, appearing about once in 649,740 five-card deals and roughly once in 30,939 seven-card combinations. 

Those odds drive both the premium payouts attached to it and the way broadcasters highlight it when it lands in major events.

What Is a Royal Flush In Poker?

In standard poker hand rankings, this hand sits in first place. It consists of a ten, a jack, a queen, a king, and an ace all of the same suit. Any suit qualifies. A ten-to-ace run in hearts has the same standing as the same pattern in clubs, diamonds, or spades, so long as every card shares that suit.

Hand rankings treat this pattern as a special case of a straight flush, sitting above every other straight flush, every four of a kind, and every other combination. Only four distinct versions exist in a standard 52-card deck, out of 2,598,960 possible five-card holdings. 

That tiny share of the total deck explains why game designers give it the highest fixed payout and why many rule sheets list it at the top of every chart—and why it often gives enormous jackpots for poker players in card rooms or in online poker sites.

Odds of Hitting a Royal Flush in Common Formats

Poker math treats this hand as a statistical outlier. Once cards and combinations are counted up, the picture looks clear; even long-term grinders may go through entire careers without seeing a royal flush poker hand more than a handful of times.

Hand rankings place this pattern in first position, then step down through straight flushes, four of a kind, full houses, and flushes. The gap in difficulty between these holdings helps explain why paytables in both poker hand charts and video poker machines scale up so aggressively at the very top. 

In a standard 5-card deal such as classic draw or the first deal in video poker, the chance of being dealt this hand is 4 out of 2,598,960, or about 0.000154 percent, which works out to roughly 1 in 649,740 deals.

Standard 7-card probabilities for Hold’em, published in common poker odds tables, show that a royal flush is roughly 100 times rarer than a straight flush with a lower high card and close to 50 times rarer than four of a kind.

The table below lines up several high-end holdings, using approximate 7-card odds from Hold’em and a standard 9/6 Jacks or Better paytable.

*Odds shown use 7-card probabilities, the usual reference model for Texas Hold’em hand frequency.

Strategy Impact in Texas Hold’em Cash Games and Tournaments

Strategy in Texas Hold’em rarely revolves around chasing the royal flush meaning that, even though hand charts place it at the summit, its low odds make it a bad option to be prioritized. The chance of a seven-card holding reaching that pattern sits around 1 in 30,939, which means months of regular play can pass without a single instance for one seat. 

Cash game decisions instead center on more common strong holdings such as overpairs, sets, and regular flushes, with the royal flush treated as a rare bonus outcome when strong draws come together.

In deep-stacked real-money casino games, nut-flush and broadway draws still matter because they build large pots. Players set bet sizes around the wider value range, since most made flushes and straights that reach showdown stop short of a royal.

Tournament structure adds pressure, since short stacks and payout ladders push players to commit chips with strong but non-nut hands long before any ten-to-ace suited pattern appears.

Myths and Misconceptions

Misunderstandings around the royal flush show up in poker rooms, home games, and at video poker banks. Some of them are harmless; others can skew expectations about how often the hand lands or what it pays. 

Of course, knowing what a real flush looks like is the first step, but clearing up a few common myths helps keep both rules and payouts grounded in real numbers instead of table talk:

1. “It has to be hearts.”: Many players grow up thinking the hand only counts if the cards are hearts. But does a royal flush have to be the same suit? Yes, absolutely. In standard rules, any suit qualifies, so long as the cards read ten, jack, queen, king, and ace in one suit. Hearts do not outrank spades, diamonds, or clubs for this pattern, and no mainstream rule set gives a bonus for a particular suit at regular cash game tables.
2. “Wild cards create the same hand.”: Games with jokers or deuces as wilds often treat a natural royal flush very differently from a version completed with wild cards. Deuces Wild video poker commonly pays 4,000 coins for a natural top hand at max bet, then drops to 1,000 coins when wild cards stand in. The paytable makes that distinction clear, yet many casual players simply hear “top hand” and assume a single fixed award regardless of how the cards arrive.
3. “Side bets guarantee a huge payout.”: Progressive side bets in table games use that rare pattern as a trigger for large jackpots, but they rely on strict conditions. A typical progressive ladder might require a royal flush made using both of a player’s hole cards on the first five cards dealt, with printed odds in the 1-in-600,000 region or higher shown on the felt or rules card. The regular main game still pays its own schedule, and the progressive fund only pays out when every listed requirement in the side-bet rules is met on a given hand.
4. “House rules never change the ranking.”: Home games and bar leagues sometimes put novelty rules into place, such as five-of-a-kind with wild cards ranked above the traditional chart. That kind of local twist can move the royal flush out of first position in that specific game. Casino rulebooks for poker and video poker remain far more standardized, keeping the traditional ranking at the top of official charts even when wild cards appear elsewhere in the format.

Real-World Examples: Royal Flush Jackpots

Recent coverage has shown this rare hand landing in significant spots, including:

• A $1.25 million jackpot at MGM National Harbor linked to Ultimate Texas Hold’em, with the winning hand reported as a royal flush and the standard 1-in-30,939 seven-card odds cited in a May 2024 WTOP Radio News story.
• A $128,774 jackpot at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, where Mississippi Stud rules paid out when a visiting player lined up the top hand on a progressive table with a relatively small base stake, as reported by KSNV NBC Las Vegas in June 2025.
• A $480,912.50 progressive win at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, triggered by a Four Card Poker side bet when a guest hit the suited ten-to-ace pattern in diamonds at a $5 wager level, in November 2025. 

Chasing the Royal Flush With Realistic Expectations

The royal flush holds a special place in poker and video poker because it ties together mathematics, design, and storytelling. Combinatorics push it into the outer edge of possibility, paytables give it the largest fixed awards, and televised hands show how dramatically it can swing a pot or trigger a progressive jackpot. 

At the same time, cash games, tournaments, and machine sessions all flow on ordinary pairs, flushes, and full houses, not on a single rare pattern.

Players who treat this hand as a welcome surprise rather than a target sit closer to the real structure of cards and odds. Decisions framed around sustainable stakes, clear formats, and transparent paytables leave space for that rare pattern to arrive on its own schedule, whether in a home game, an online session, or under bright lights on a casino floor.

Always play responsibly. T&Cs apply (+18).

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