Saturday I was playing at Caesars Palace. A hand in which I was not involved had a final board of 3c-6c-7c-Qh-3d. At showdown, a woman tabled Ac-Jc (giving a wave to BWOP), and won.
This is where it got interesting. One guy at the table said, "She had the nuts." The guy next to him said, "No, straight flush would be the nuts. She only had the second nuts." First guy said, "Well, yeah, OK, but she had the nuts if you don't count the straight flush." Second guy said, "That's right."
At this point, I feel like giving them both a dope slap.
For the record, the woman with Ac-Jc had the ninth nuts. She would be beaten by any player holding:
1) 4c-5c
2) 3h-3s
3) Q-Q
4) 7-7
5) 6-6
6) Q-3
7) 7-3
8) 6-3
No, I did not speak up to correct the dopes. Not my job to teach them how to read the board. Better for me if they can't figure it out.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Who's got the nuts?
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2 comments:
Also even though the ace of clubs was taken, AcKc and AcQc rank in front of AcJc in terms of nuts. That's the old adage about the nuts vs a lock. If you have a hand that can't be beat but technically isn't the best possible, it's only a lock.
Yeah, I never know for sure whether to call "nuts" in a situation in which a hand is the best possible *given that you know something about the hole cards*, but isn't the best possible in the abstract. E.g., if I have AK on a board of AAK73, I certainly have a lock. Do I have the nuts? Well, I know that there can be no better hand than mine, so I'm willing to call it the nuts, even though somebody without knowledge of my hole cards would look at the board and say that AA is the nuts.
It just depends on how you define "nuts," and we don't really have any definitive authority to rely on for that.
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