Texas Holdem Nut Hands Tips

These are some tips you might want to take a look at, they will help you while you are playing.

Ability to be aggressive:

When you are in a multiway hand and you do have a draw to the nuts (especially the non-split table nut flush) you should be as aggressive as possible while keeping in mind that your goal is to get as much money as you can in the pot.  So, for example, in most (again this is depending on the particular table and situation you are playing) cases you should avoid making most of the table call two bets cold, however if most of the players are already in for a bet you always want to make them pay another bet on each betting round before the river when you hold the nut draw.

You accomplish a few things by doing this.  First, you maximize your profit when you make your draw.  Second, you may sometimes get out weaker made hands like middle pair and bottom pair, low pocket pairs and big ace high hands like AK/AQ which can give you additional outs to win the hand by pairing one of your drawing cards on the end.  Third, you introduce action to the table which keeps players sitting and keeps them putting their money in the middle of the table.

You cannot only be aggressive with your nut draws you must also be similarly aggressive with your made hands.  Observant players will not know whether your betting strength indicates a hand like a set or two pair or a flush or straight draw which is exactly what you want.

If you are drawing to the nuts versus more than a few opponents and you think you can raise without scaring most of them out of the pot then do it!  In the long run this will translate directly to extra money in your bankroll.

Remember the position factor:

Position is a big factor in increasing the amount of money you win (or decreasing the amount you lose).  Many times you will have to limit aggression on nut draws when you are in early position.  Be aware of where you are in relation to who is left to act before deciding to bet or raise with your draw.  Betting into an aggressive player from early position can make them reraise to try to isolate you--effectively stealing most of your income should you make your draw.  If you feel certain that someone will bet your draw for you then let them!

Be conservative when you need to:

While we'd always like to be drawing to the nuts, sometimes things just don't work out that way and yet pot odds dictate that we continue with a non nut draw.  In these cases we usually want to limit the amount of additional money that goes into the pot especially for non nut straight draws and very low flush draws (you can be somewhat more aggressive with a king or queen high flush draw but even in these cases you'll often want to save that extra aggression for after you make your draw).

If you do make your non-nut draw on the river you may want to check it if you are against one other opponent at that point and you don't have a strong read that your hand is better.  You can sometimes entice them to bluff at the pot when they would have folded for the last bet if they missed their draw. This will also save you money when they made their draw to a higher hand.