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Determining “the nuts” in Hold’em is essential.  You should always know exactly what the nuts is!!

What’s the nuts? The best possible hand given what is on the board.

The least the nuts can ever be once the river card is dealt out is three queens.

You should sit with a deck of cards and deal out some boards and practice figuring out what the nuts, second nuts, third nuts etc is on every board until you can instantly identify the nuts without error, ever time.   Let’s look at some examples:

Each board will have 1, 2 and 3 listed afterwords, indicating the first, second and third nuts.  The corresponding hand will be in parentheses.

Ts Js 4d 9h 3c

1. King high straight (KQ)

2.  Queen high straight (Q8)

3.  Jack high straight (78)

Js Qs 2d 4d 7h

1. Three queens (QQ)

2. Three jacks (JJ)

3. Three sevens (77)

4s 4h Ks Jd 3s

1.  quad fours (44)

2. kings full of fours (KK)

3. jacks full of fours (JJ)

9s 8s 6s 6d Ah

1. Straight flush, ten high (Ts7s)

2. straight flush, nine high (7s5s)

3. quad sixes (66)

9s 8d 7s 4s 2h

1. Ace high flush (AsXs)

2. king high flush (KsXs)

3. queen high flush (QsXs)

Ks Kd Qs Jd 4c

1.  Four kings (KK)

2. kings full of queens (KQ)

3. kings full of jacks (KJ)

Always remember that if the board is paired, the nuts is always at least four of a kind, but could possibly be a straight flush.  If no straight flush is possible, start looking at the highest possible full houses for the second and third nuts.

It should be noted that just because you’re drawing to the nuts on the flop, does not mean that you will have the nuts on the river if you make your draw!  For instance, if you have the nut flush draw on the flop, make your flush on the turn, but the board pairs on the river, you no longer have the nuts!

Also, when considering which draws you want to play, you should always consider if you’re drawing to the nuts, and if not, what your chances of winning will be if you make your draw.  Also, when you’re not drawing to the nuts, you should always consider the chance that you’ll make your draw, but lose to a better hand (possibly the nuts).  Sometimes these considerations will cause you to choose not to draw to certain hands.

Make sure you can instantly and accurately identify the nuts.  This is cruicial to being able to play hold’em well.

PokerGuru

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