In this post we are going to dive into some thought processes of playing full houses in 6Plus hold’em, in the game where flushes out rank full houses on boards with flush draws (two of any suit) we will want to fast play our hands and give flush draws the wrong odds to catch up, however, on rainbow boards where there is no need to protect from flush draws this is how we ended up playing two strong hands…

Hand #1

We are dealt T♣ 7♥ on the button and in this position whilst playing 6Plus hold’em the big blind is posted on the button, so we have the ante and blind invested in this pot, a total of $0.50.

The action is limped around the table, so we get to see the flop for free, which comes…
T♦ 6♣ T♥
The action is checked to us on the flop so we pot it, betting $2 into $2 and get one call.

Turn card

Q♣ and now our opponent leads out for full a pot sized bet.

With the board now reading T♦ 6♣ T♥ Q♣

We have what is almost a bluff catcher with our nothing kicker, our opponent is almost guaranteed to have a Ten in their hand themselves. So there is no need for us to raise here, we are just turning our hand into a bluff by doing that.

So this is a strange spot, our hand is to good to fold, but we are drawing dead to some hands too. We call and see a river.

The river

Brings the 7♠ meaning the final board is T♦ 6♣ T♥ Q♣ 7♠

We now have a full house, Tens full of Sevens.

This is the deciding factor in whether we will call all in on this card, on some run outs we will probably have to fold this hand, such as 6, 8, 9 as this would mean any kicker in our opponents hand will play with the Queen high on the board as our opponent is going to have T8, T9, JT, QT, KT, AT here too much, but once we make a full house, we now only lose to QQ and QT.

There are far too many combinations of hands with tens in them that our opponent has that we now beat so folding is out of the question, our opponent bets $13.49 and we call and beat the holding of our rival who tables 8♠ T♠ for three of kind.

Hand #2

We are dealt K♠ 9♣ once again on the button and with 2 limps of the $0.25 blind, this type of holding is not one we want to play big pots with typically, so we choose to just take a free flop on the button rather than raise. However, we could choose to mix up our play occasionally here and use this hand as a steal.

The Flop

Q♣ K♣ 9♥
A good board for our hand, we flop top and bottom two pair, and the action is checked to us on the button and this is a good time to build a pot for value with our two pair, in the long run here we will get calls from worse one pair and drawing hands. We bet $1.75 into the $2 in the middle and get a call from a trappy player that has earlier slow played hands. So our radar is going off that we may be beaten by this player calling such a decent bet on this flop.

The Turn

Is a nice card for us! The 9♦ hitting making the board Q♣ K♣ 9♥ 9♦ Giving us a full house!

This could be good for us as if our opponent is slow playing a big hand like a flopped straight, we now beat that, however, we are in bad shape against a hand like Queens full here, but they continue with another check and although we could be digging our own grave against a tricky player we can’t play scared poker with full houses, so we bet around 80% pot, $4.50 into a pot of now $5.22 and our opponent calls.

The River

Is a meaningless 6♠ making the final 5 cards on board Q♣ K♣ 9♥ 9♦ 6♠

We still beat all the hands we beat on the turn and still lose to any better full house, although we block Kings full. Our opponent checks it over to us, now there are players that will choose to slow play hands, but be fearful of losing value on the river, so take that point to lead out. This doesn’t happen and I’m happy that most of the time we are betting for pure value here on the end against worse two pairs, three of a kind or straights to call us.

This is a great opportunity to go for maximum value with a 2.2x overbet of the pot putting our opponent all in for their remaining $30 with just $13.78 in the pot.

Luckily for us, our opponent was trapping us on the flop where they flopped a straight, they call our overbet jam on the river and we get maximum value with our full house taking $72.48