Short Deck Poker Hand Frequencies: Exact 5/7-Card Odds

Short deck hold'em (also called six-plus hold'em) strips the twos through fives from the deck, leaving 36 cards, and in doing so rewrites most of the probability tables that regular hold'em players know by heart. This reference page lists the exact short deck poker hand frequencies for five-card and seven-card hands, produced by full enumeration rather than sampling, and sets them beside the familiar 52-card figures so that the effect of removing sixteen cards is visible in every row.

Key Findings

• A 36-card deck produces 376,992 five-card hands and 8,347,680 seven-card hands, against 2,598,960 and 133,784,560 in a 52-card deck.
• In seven cards a flush lands 2.10% of the time in short deck versus 3.03% in regular hold'em, while a full house lands 7.58% versus 2.60%. The full house is about 3.6 times as common as the flush, which is why short deck ranks the flush higher.
• Pocket aces arrive 0.45% of the time in regular hold'em and 0.95% in short deck (1 in 105.0).
• A player holds two Broadway cards 30.16% of the time in short deck against 14.33% in regular hold'em.
• Four of a kind appears in 0.53% of seven-card short deck hands, roughly 3 times its regular-deck rate of 0.168%.

Why Short Deck Changes the Math

Regular hold'em uses 13 ranks in four suits. Short deck keeps nine ranks, six through ace, in the same four suits. The ace still plays high or low, so A-6-7-8-9 is the lowest straight, just as A-2-3-4-5 is in the 52-card game. Because each rank still has four cards but there are fewer ranks, the chance that any two cards share a rank rises sharply, and the chance that five cards share a suit changes in the opposite direction, since each suit now holds nine cards rather than thirteen. Pairing, trips, quads and straights all become more frequent, while flushes become rarer relative to full houses. That swing is the reason the game departs from the standard ranking of hands.

PokerNews' published primer on the game summarizes the two main rule changes: the flush ranks above the full house, and the ace plays low in A-6-7-8-9. It also notes that some versions keep a straight above three of a kind while others rank three of a kind higher, a point our enumeration speaks to directly below. Operators and live-event organizers publish their own rules, so players should confirm the version before sitting down.

Methodology

Every figure on this page is an exact count, not a simulation. We wrote a short program that iterates through every possible five-card and seven-card combination from a 36-card deck (ranks six through ace, four suits) and a 52-card deck, and classifies the best five-card hand in each combination. Straights were detected from a rank bitmask, with the ace counted both high and low. Flushes were detected from per-suit counts of five or more cards, and straight flushes from a straight within a single suit. Full houses were identified as three cards of one rank plus at least two of another.

To validate the code, the 52-card run was checked against the well-established totals: 2,598,960 five-card hands and 133,784,560 seven-card hands, with 41,584 straight-flush hands (royal flushes included) and 224,848 four-of-a-kind hands in seven cards. Our output matched on every category. The only ranking-dependent categories are the contested ones. When a seven-card hand contains both a flush and a full house, or both a straight and three of a kind, the hand is counted in whichever category the rules rank higher. In practice a seven-card hand cannot hold both a flush and a full house, so the flush-versus-full-house rule does not change any count. The straight-versus-trips rule does, which is why the seven-card table below shows two columns for the 36-card deck.

Counts are combinations of dealt cards, so they describe a player's best seven cards (two hole cards plus five board cards) when no cards are folded or known. They are not conditional on betting, and they treat every hand as played to showdown.

Five-Card Hand Frequencies

Five-card frequencies are the cleanest way to see the structural change, because no ranking choice affects them. The table gives the number of distinct combinations, the share of all hands and, for the 36-card deck, the odds against.

The largest relative shifts are in the middle of the table. A five-card flush needs five cards of one suit from a nine-card suit, so there are only 480 non-straight flushes, or 0.127% of hands, while a full house arrives 1,728 ways, or 0.458%. The full house is 3.6 times as common as the flush in five cards. In regular hold'em the same comparison goes the other way: 5,108 flushes against 3,744 full houses, so the full house is rarer and ranks higher.

Straights more than quadruple their share. A five-card straight is 1.62% of short deck hands, against 0.39% in the 52-card game. High-card hands, the most common result in regular poker at 50.1%, fall to 32.5%, and one pair becomes the most common five-card hand at 51.3%.

Seven-Card Frequencies: What Showdowns Actually Look Like

Hold'em players build their best hand from seven cards, so seven-card frequencies are the more relevant benchmark. The table shows regular hold'em alongside two short-deck variants. The first assumes the straight outranks three of a kind (the standard ranking apart from the flush rule). The second assumes three of a kind outranks the straight. In both variants the flush ranks above the full house.

Several patterns stand out. A seven-card full house is 7.6% of short deck hands, nearly three times the 2.6% seen in regular hold'em, while a flush falls to 2.1% from 3.0%. Two pair becomes the single most common best hand at 37.8%, above one pair at 27.8%; in regular hold'em one pair leads at 43.8%. Only 2.79% of seven-card short deck hands finish with nothing better than high card, compared with 17.4% in the 52-card game.

Why the flush outranks the full house

Hand rankings in poker follow rarity: rarer hands beat more common ones. In regular hold'em, a seven-card flush occurs 4,047,644 times and a full house 3,473,184 times, so the flush is about 1.17 times as common and ranks below. In the 36-card deck the order flips decisively: 633,024 full houses against 175,560 flushes. The full house is 3.6 times as likely, so it is the weaker hand. Swapping the two rankings simply restores the principle that frequency determines strength.

Straight versus three of a kind

The same logic applies to the contested pairing. With the straight ranked higher, a seven-card straight is the best hand in 1,169,940 combinations (14.0%) and three of a kind in 607,200 (7.3%). With trips ranked higher, straights drop to 1,139,580 (13.7%) and trips rise to 637,560 (7.6%). Either way, trips are the rarer outcome, which supports ranking three of a kind above the straight in the way some operators do. In regular hold'em the two are almost balanced (6,180,020 straights against 6,461,620 trips hands), and the ranking is historical convention.

Starting-Hand Frequencies

Removing sixteen cards also changes what players are dealt. The table compares the share of starting hands in each category; the figures are exact combinations out of 1,326 two-card hands in regular hold'em and 630 in short deck.

The pocket-pair rate climbs from 5.9% to 8.6%, and premium holdings appear far more often: pocket aces roughly double, from 1 in 221.0 to 1 in 105.0. Ace-king also doubles to 2.5%. These results agree with the figures PokerNews published in its own odds primer for the game (for example, pocket aces at 1 in 105 and two Broadway cards at about 30%), which gives an independent check on our enumeration. Because strong holdings are so common, the value of any single holding drops, and equities run much closer together than in the 52-card game.

Drawing Odds in a 36-Card Deck

The familiar "rule of 2 and 4" for converting outs into percentages does not carry over directly. With 31 unseen cards on the flop instead of 47, each out is worth more, and PokerNews notes that short deck players use a "3 and 6" rule instead. The table computes exact hit rates for common draws from the flop, using hypergeometric probabilities for the turn and for turn-plus-river.

An open-ended straight draw with eight outs completes by the river about 45.6% of the time in short deck versus 31.5% in regular hold'em, so straight draws become much stronger. Flush draws move the other way: a four-flush has only five outs left in the nine-card suit, which is why short-deck flush draws are less valuable than their 52-card counterparts and why a made flush is so strong.

What These Numbers Mean for Strategy

Frequency tables are not strategy, but they explain the strategic consensus. Because two pair and trips arrive so often, a hand such as top pair loses much of its value on coordinated boards. Because straights are common and straight draws are strong, ranges on connected boards are dominated by draws. And because a flush is harder to complete but beats a full house, players holding a single suited card do not chase as readily. For a broader grounding in these ideas, our poker strategy hub and the GTO versus exploitative play guide cover the principles that apply in any variant, and the equity calculator lets players test the 52-card equivalents of these hands. The hand rankings reference shows the standard order for comparison, and the poker glossary defines terms such as outs, connectors and Broadway.

Limitations

These are unconditional frequencies. They describe all possible deals and do not account for the way players select hands to play, for the effect of a known board on opponents' ranges, or for variant rules such as a button ante. Some live and online games also vary the ranking of trips and straights, which is why both variants are shown. Finally, the counts rank hands by category only; they do not break ties within a category (for example, which flush wins).

Sources

• PokerNews: Exploring Short Deck Hold'em, Part 2: Odds and Probabilities, used for rule descriptions and as a cross-check of starting-hand and out percentages.
• Wikipedia: Six-plus hold 'em, for general background on the variant.
• DeucesCracked Editorial exact-enumeration calculations, November 2026 (all five-card and seven-card counts, derived percentages and drawing odds).

Frequently Asked Questions

How many five-card hands exist in a 36-card deck?

There are 376,992 distinct five-card combinations in a 36-card deck, compared with 2,598,960 in a 52-card deck.

Why does a flush beat a full house in short deck poker?

Because it is rarer. In a seven-card hand a full house occurs 633,024 times against 175,560 flushes in the 36-card deck, so the flush is about 3.6 times scarcer and ranks higher.

Does three of a kind beat a straight in short deck?

It depends on the game. Some operators rank three of a kind above a straight and some do not. Our enumeration shows trips are the rarer hand in either case (7.6% versus 13.7% when trips rank higher).

How often do you get pocket aces in short deck hold'em?

Pocket aces occur 0.95% of the time, or 1 in 105.0, versus 0.45% in regular hold'em.

What is the lowest straight in short deck?

A-6-7-8-9, where the ace plays low. Because twos through five are removed, the ace-low straight is built from the six, seven, eight and nine.

Cite This Article: If you use data from this article, please link back to https://www.deucescracked.com/blog/short-deck-hold-em-hand-frequencies-exact-odds-data. The full methodology and every count are published above. Explore more in our research archive.