Do You Use Jokers in Poker? Why Not, Plus Wild Card Hand Rankings
Texas Hold'em uses 52 cards, no jokers. Here's why — backed by a full count of every five-card hand. Adding one joker makes three of a kind more common than two pair, breaking the ranking order.
📝 What you need to know first: You can read this article with no prior knowledge. That said, hand names come up throughout, so the two articles below will make it go down easier.
| # | Concept | Related Article |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The poker hands and their ranking order | Poker Hand Rankings — All 10 Hands Explained |
| 2 | What Texas Hold'em actually is | What Is Poker? The Appeal of Texas Hold'em |
Texas Hold'em Doesn't Use Jokers
Texas Hold'em is played with 52 cards, jokers removed. When you open a fresh deck, set the jokers aside.
This isn't a house rule. It holds from the WSOP down to your local card room, and on every major online site.
| Game | Joker | Cards in play |
|---|---|---|
| Texas Hold'em | Not used | 52 |
| Omaha (PLO) | Not used | 52 |
| Stud and draw games (official rules) | Not used | 52 |
| Wild card poker (home rules) | Used (stands in for any card) | 53–54 |
| President / Daifugō | Used (top of the deck) | 53–54 |
| Old Maid | Used (holding it loses) | 53 |
The point: Poker games that use jokers do exist, but they're home variants known as wild card poker. Poker played competitively is 52 cards, without exception.
Why Poker Leaves the Joker Out
"Because it would make hands too strong" — you see that explanation a lot, and it only covers half of it. There are three real reasons.
Reason 1: The hand ranking order breaks
The order of poker hands wasn't chosen by taste. It follows one mechanical rule: the harder a hand is to make from 52 cards, the stronger it ranks.
Count every possibility and you get this. There are 2,598,960 ways to deal five cards.
| Hand | Combinations (52 cards) | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 4 | 0.00015% |
| Straight Flush | 36 | 0.0014% |
| Four of a Kind | 624 | 0.024% |
| Full House | 3,744 | 0.144% |
| Flush | 5,108 | 0.197% |
| Straight | 10,200 | 0.392% |
| Three of a Kind | 54,912 | 2.11% |
| Two Pair | 123,552 | 4.75% |
| One Pair | 1,098,240 | 42.26% |
| High Card | 1,302,540 | 50.12% |
From top to bottom, the combination counts climb without a single break. Stronger hands are rarer. No exceptions.
Now add one joker. Counting all 2,869,685 possibilities gives this.
| Hand | 52 cards | 53 cards (one joker) |
|---|---|---|
| Five of a Kind | — | 13 |
| Royal Flush | 4 | 24 |
| Straight Flush | 36 | 180 |
| Four of a Kind | 624 | 3,120 |
| Full House | 3,744 | 6,552 |
| Flush | 5,108 | 7,804 |
| Straight | 10,200 | 20,532 |
| Three of a Kind | 54,912 | 137,280 |
| Two Pair | 123,552 | 123,552 |
| One Pair | 1,098,240 | 1,268,088 |
| High Card | 1,302,540 | 1,302,540 |
Look at three of a kind and two pair. They've swapped places.
One joker is all it takes. Three of a kind (137,280 combinations) is now more common than two pair (123,552). That follows naturally — hold the joker and any single pair becomes trips. Yet the rules still rank three of a kind above two pair.
The one principle holding the ranking together — rarer means stronger — is now broken. You end up with a hand that is both more common and stronger.
Go to two jokers and it falls apart further.
- Three of a Kind (232,968) > Two Pair (123,552) — reversed
- One Pair (1,437,936) > High Card (1,302,540) — reversed
- Four of a Kind 9,360 = Full House 9,360 — exactly tied
That last line says it all. Four of a kind and a full house land on the identical count, not off by one combination. There is no longer any way to decide which one should rank higher.
These numbers are for a straight five-card deal, as in draw poker. Texas Hold'em picks the best five out of seven, so the actual frequencies differ — but the ranking order itself is still built on 52 cards. For Hold'em frequencies, see Poker Hand Probabilities.
Reason 2: You can no longer read the best possible hand
In Texas Hold'em, everyone sees the same community cards. That's what lets every player work out the strongest hand available on that board — the nuts.
Say the flop comes A♠ K♠ 7♥. The best hand out there right now is three aces, from a pocket pair like A♥ A♦. When an opponent bets big, you can picture something concrete: they might hold trip aces. Being able to run that calculation is the foundation of every decision in poker.
Drop a joker into the deck and the foundation disappears. The joker lifts its holder's hand by one card no matter what, so the branch "what if they have the joker" never closes on any board. On that same flop, anyone holding the joker plus A♥ also has three aces. Pair the board and four of a kind comes into range; put trips on the board and so does five of a kind. The question "what's the best hand they could have?" simply stops having an answer.
Here's a full breakdown of how to read the nuts.
Reason 3: Nobody has a reason to fold anymore
Poker isn't only won by holding the best hand. Bet, get everyone to fold, and a weak hand takes the pot. That works because your opponent suspects their own hand might be the weaker one.
Add jokers and everybody's hand gets stronger at once.
| Deck | High card (no made hand) | One pair or better |
|---|---|---|
| 52 cards | 50.12% | 49.88% |
| 53 cards (one joker) | 45.39% | 54.61% |
| 54 cards (two jokers) | 41.19% | 58.81% |
Narrow it to three of a kind or better and the shift is sharper still.
- 52 cards … 2.87% (about 1 in 35)
- 53 cards … 6.12% (about 1 in 16)
- 54 cards … 9.44% (about 1 in 11)
With two jokers, one deal in ten produces trips or better. At that point "they probably have something" is true all the time, and betting to make people fold stops working as a tool at all.
Wild Card Poker: The Games That Do Use Jokers
Everything above applies to poker played as a competitive game. For a night around the kitchen table, poker with jokers is a real thing.
The joker becomes a wild card — a card that can stand in for anything. In English these games are usually just called wild card poker. You'll almost always find them in draw poker formats such as five-card draw, where players swap cards to build a hand.
Basic rules
- Put one or two jokers into the deck
- Whoever holds a joker may treat it as any rank and any suit they like
- You decide what it is at the moment hands are shown
The limited version (the bug)
Some games restrict the joker instead of making it fully wild. Used this way, the joker counts only as an ace, or as a card that completes a straight, a flush or a straight flush. It can't be used to make pairs or trips. Hands don't inflate the way they do with a fully wild joker, so the game stays balanced.
Joker rules vary from table to table. Settle three things before the first deal: how many jokers go in, whether they're fully wild or bugs, and whether five of a kind counts. These are the classic sources of an argument after the money's already in the middle.
Hand Rankings with a Joker in the Deck
With a joker in play, five of a kind sits on top of the usual ten, making eleven hands. Frequencies below are measured on a 53-card deck with one joker.
| Rank | Hand | How it's made | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Five of a Kind | Five cards of one rank (joker included) | 0.00045% |
| 2 | Royal Flush | A, K, Q, J, 10 of one suit | 0.00084% |
| 3 | Straight Flush | Five in sequence, all one suit | 0.0063% |
| 4 | Four of a Kind | Four cards of one rank | 0.109% |
| 5 | Full House | Three of a kind plus a pair | 0.228% |
| 6 | Flush | Five cards of one suit | 0.272% |
| 7 | Straight | Five cards in sequence | 0.715% |
| 8 | Three of a Kind | Three cards of one rank | 4.78% |
| 9 | Two Pair | Two pairs | 4.31% |
| 10 | One Pair | One pair | 44.19% |
| 11 | High Card | Nothing made | 45.39% |
What Is Five of a Kind?
Five cards of the same rank. A 52-card deck only holds four of each rank, so this hand is impossible in ordinary poker. It exists only because of the joker.
- One-joker games … four of a rank + the joker
- Two-joker games … three of a rank + both jokers also works
For example, 7♠ 7♥ 7♦ 7♣ + joker is five of a kind, sevens.
Why does it outrank a royal flush? The combination count again. On a 53-card deck there are only 13 ways to make five of a kind, against 24 for a royal flush. Here, at least, "rarer means stronger" still holds.
Five of a kind exists only in wild card house rules. It isn't part of official poker. That's exactly why you'll see poker described as having ten hands.
You Can Still Make a Royal Flush with a Joker
People assume a joker somehow invalidates the royal flush. It doesn't — it makes one easier to hit.
Use the joker as the ace of spades and you have a genuine royal flush. On 52 cards it comes once in 649,740 deals; with one joker added, once in 119,570. More than five times as often.
How to Assign Your Joker
When you hold a joker, what card it becomes is your call. Plenty of players cost themselves a pot here, so it's worth having a fixed procedure.
There's only one rule. Run down the hand rankings from the top and stop at the first hand that works.
Example 1: 7♠ 7♥ 7♦ 8♣ + joker
- Make the joker an 8 → 7-7-7-8-8, a full house
- Make the joker 7♣ → four sevens
Four of a kind is the higher hand, so calling it a seven is correct. When there's an 8 sitting right there, the full house is the tempting read — watch for it.
Example 2: A♠ K♠ Q♠ J♠ + joker
Call the joker 10♠ and you have a royal flush. Work down from the top and there's nothing to think about.
Example 3: 9♥ 9♦ 5♠ 5♣ + joker
No rank appears three times, so four of a kind is out. Use the joker as a nine for a full house, 9-9-9-5-5. Note that you make the nines the trips, not the fives: when two full houses meet, the trips decide it.
Stuck? Say the list out loud from the top — "five of a kind, straight flush, four of a kind, full house…" The first one that works is always the answer.
Should You Remove the Joker for Home Games?
If you're playing Texas Hold'em, the answer is simple. Take them out. Anything other than 52 cards is a different game.
If you just want to play something poker-ish with a deck of cards, decide by what you're after.
| Goal | Jokers | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Learning the hands / practising | 0 | Matches real poker. What you learn transfers directly |
| A loud game with a big group | 1 | Big hands roughly double in frequency, which makes the showdowns fun |
| Purely for spectacle | 2 | Trips or better about one deal in eleven. Strong hands become routine and the reads dry up |
If anyone at the table is trying to learn poker, removing the jokers matters. An instinct built on "three of a kind is more common than two pair" will work exactly backwards at a real table.
Here's our guide to picking the deck itself.
How the Joker Works in Other Card Games
Part of what makes the joker confusing in poker is that experience from other games gets in the way. One and the same card means opposite things depending on what you're playing.
| Game | The joker's role | Standing |
|---|---|---|
| Texas Hold'em | Not used | — |
| Wild card poker | Stands in for any card | Effectively the strongest |
| President / Daifugō | Beats anything on its own | Strongest (house rules vary a lot) |
| Old Maid | Holding it at the end loses | Weakest |
| Rummy | Wild — stands in for any card | Strong, but expensive to be caught with |
Strongest in one game, worst card in the deck in another. The joker's power comes from the rules, not from the card.
Poker is the one entry on that list that chose "don't use it at all." As we've seen, its three pillars — the ranking order, reading the nuts, and betting people off their hands — are all built on a 52-card deck.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: How many jokers come in a deck of cards?
See the answer
Most decks are 54 cards: 52 plus two jokers. Poker decks often add a cut card (a blank used to hide the bottom of the deck) and an information card on top of that.
None of them are used in poker, so the simplest habit is to pull the jokers out when you open a deck and keep them somewhere separate.
Q2: Does adding a joker make a royal flush impossible?
See the answer
Not at all — it makes one more likely.
Use the joker in place of whichever card you're missing and the hand is a genuine royal flush. On 52 cards it comes once in 649,740 deals; add one joker and it's once in 119,570.
Q3: Is five of a kind an official hand?
See the answer
No. It exists only under wild card house rules.
A 52-card deck holds four cards of each rank, so the hand can't be made at all in ordinary poker. There's no five of a kind at the WSOP or any other official event — the royal flush is the top hand.
Q4: Do online poker sites use jokers?
See the answer
All the major games — Texas Hold'em, Omaha and the rest — run on 52 cards with no jokers.
The deck a server deals from is the same 52 cards. If jokers turn up, you're looking at a card game that borrowed the poker name rather than poker itself.
Summary
- Poker played as a competitive game — Texas Hold'em included — uses 52 cards. No jokers
- The reason isn't that jokers are too strong. It's that three foundations give way at once
- The ranking order breaks (one joker makes three of a kind more common than two pair)
- The nuts, the best hand available, becomes impossible to calculate
- Everyone's hand improves, so betting no longer folds anyone out
- Wild card poker, played with jokers, is a real thing. It adds five of a kind at the top
- If someone at the table is learning the hands, take the jokers out
Next Step
Now that you know why the deck is 52 cards, the next thing to lock in is the ranking order of the hands those 52 cards make. Get the comparisons and the kicker rules down and you'll never hesitate at the table.
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