Full Houses - Not All They Seem to Be

A full house is a pretty monstrous hand, but it's rarely a very well disguised one. While it's nice to hit a full house while someone else is drawing dead to a flush, the "low" full house is vulnerable to extremely painful beats.

Even with a set, flopping a full house can be dangerous. Consider this example:

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You hold 4 ♣ 4♠. The flop comes:

4 ♥ 7 ♦7 ♠

This is the best you could have hoped for - you've flopped a full house, which happens about 1 in 1000 hands. But you're extremely vulnerable. If you get action with this hand, it's likely that someone else is holding the other 7. Although they are drawing to a 3-outers, it's hard to see what the safe card is. Unless they have 72 or 73, any card that comes next could make them a higher full house. An 8 or 6 might be cause for concern, since they're mostly likely to be holding a seven in a connectors hand; an ace might also be a problem. Something like a jack is probably safe, but they're going to draw twice with trips, so you have to grit your teeth and take your chances.

Another painful situation is when your opponent holds a premium pocket pair and simply doesn't want to believe you have a seven. In this case it's only a two-outer, but if he hits it you're in trouble. If the final board reads:

4 ♥ 7 ♦7 ♠ K ♥ A♣

and you're raised on the river, there's a possibility that they just hit aces or kings full. Hopefully they had AK and were drawing dead the whole time; but if there was a lot of action pre-flop, aces or kings certainly isn't out of the question.

This isn't even considering the possibility that you're drawing dead to pocket 7s, but one can't worry about that during the course of everyday play.

Small pairs are sticky. The best you can hope for here is an uncoordinated flop with an ace or king, something like:

2♣ 4♦ K♠

To get someone with KQ or AK interested. They are almost drawing dead, and if another king falls they will ram and jam. It's better to make your full house on the turn or river, since there is a smaller chance of being outdrawn in that case.

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Even the best hands can go bad, and it really hurts when the set loses to a runner-runner flush. The benefit of small pair sets is that people don't fear them; the associated problem is that you get drawn out on far more because they don't give you credit even if you raise.