Wednesday, January 28, 2009

I Flopped the Nuts, Now What?

By Michael Mylar

Many times you sit a poker table never getting any good hands for half the day making no real money. Often times many will envision winning with the nuts. You visualize how amazing it would be to win with the nuts. The fact of the matter remains that it required not only the nuts, but skill to win time and time again.

No matter what your cards are, nuts or no nuts; your job is to get as much money as possible from your opponents. There is not any one strategy to use when you flop the nuts. Some may tell you that it would be wise to just simply check when you have the nuts. I mean, why not? You have the best hand anyways so you cannot get ran down, plus you do not want any of the other players to know that you are strong, right? Wrong!

While its might be true and the perfect approach at certain times, its not the case all the time so don't be boxed in one technique. You might want to just move all in and push all your chips into the pot. Its just depends on the players in the pot and how the table has been playing over the last few hands.

The first thought that goes through your head is how powerful your hand is when you have the nuts. Its also possible that you have the nuts but still have a week position. When you have a week position or hand its always a good idea to protect it if you stay in the pot.

You know you cannot lose at this point, but there is a good chance that someone may draw out on you. This is an instance that you should protect that hand and make sure that you are protecting that hand. If you see that you do have the nuts, and it cannot ever be beat in this hand, then it maybe wise to check your hand and see what your opponents do.

It depends a lot on your competition as well as your playing style. If you are an aggressive player then there is no reason to check here no matter what. People expect you to bet, so bet. They are not going to put you on the nuts. If you do check here and you are an aggressive player then they are going to think something is up. Not only that, but your opponent is going to have a large effect on what you do here. If you are going against a really aggressive crazy player that bets every time, then check it to him and let him or her bet the hand for you. You can only set the trap there is a path to get to the trap. If you know the opponent isn't going to bite on that trap, you must do whatever you think to get as much money out of the situation as possible.

One factor that makes a very big role is how many poker players are at the table. If there are only a few players in the hand maybe let them catch up a bit trying to improve or come around a bit before you win.

There is no reason to scare them away from the hand if you believe they cant out draw you. Every poker players dream is to flop the nuts but if you cant extract a lot of chips its worthless.

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