🥜 The nuts: why in Omaha the "almost best" hand loses
How to find the nuts on any board and how often someone at the table has them · Advanced
In Hold'em the second nuts is almost always a good hand. In Omaha, on a wet board, one of your opponents very often has the nuts, and the player who keeps paying off with the second-best flush loses the most. This lesson covers how to find the nuts quickly, how they change street by street, and what an "almost best" hand is worth.
The nuts and how to find them
The nuts is the strongest hand possible on the board. Check from the top down:
— is the board paired — then a full house and quads are possible;
— are there three cards of one suit — a flush is possible; without them, no flush;
— are there three cards within five ranks — a straight is possible.
And remember the two-card rule: the nuts is two specific cards in your opponent's hand. On K♥9♥4♥7♣2♠ there's no pair, no straight, three hearts — the nuts is a flush: the ace of hearts plus any other heart in the hand (you need exactly two hearts from your hand, and the higher one is the ace).
How often someone has the nuts
On a 9♥8♥7♣ flop the nut straight is Jack-Ten. 19% of random hands have some made straight on this flop, and at least one of five opponents has a straight 68% of the time.
On a K♠9♠4♠7♦2♣ river a random hand has a flush 19.4% of the time, one of five opponents 71%. If you have a queen-high flush Q♠J♠, at least one of five opponents has the nut flush with the ace of spades 18.4% of the time.
These are numbers against random hands. In a real pot that reached the river with big bets, your opponents' hands are far from random: the chance of running into the nuts there is noticeably higher.
The nuts street by street
The nuts change with every card. On a 9♥8♥7♣ flop the nuts is the J-T straight. A third heart on the turn — now the nuts is a flush. The board pairs — a full house.
It's important to understand the difference between the nuts right now and the nuts with a margin. A flopped J-T straight J♣10♦4♠2♣ on 9♥8♥7♣ against a set of nines with the nut flush draw 9♠9♦A♥5♥ has only 37%: the set has lots of outs to a full house and quads, plus the flush. The nuts on the flop isn't a pot already won.
What follows from this
1. On wet boards, value your hand by what can beat it, not by how high it is on the list of hand rankings.
2. A non-ace flush, the low end of a straight, a full house that isn't the top one — these are small-pot hands. A big pot with them against several opponents is often a losing proposition.
3. An opponent's bet after the nuts change (a third suit, a paired board) is a strong signal: in Omaha it's hard to bluff in these spots, someone almost always has the nuts.
Practice: 10 river boards — name the nuts.