"Can I get away from the second nuts?" I hear that question floated around the poker table all the time. It usually takes the form of, "Can I get away from pocket kings preflop?" But I've also heard: "Can I get away from middle set?" "Can I get away from the second-nut flush?" And I've even heard, "Can I get away from a full house with a possible straight flush on board?"
A lot of players don't just ask this question - they obsess over it. They want to know how they can possibly avoid losing money with the second nuts, and they act as if an inability to answer this question will somehow prevent them from ever succeeding at poker. Here are just a few things I tell players who ask me if they can ever fold when holding the second nuts.
1. Learning how to fold the second nuts will not make you a great player. Even if you could read your opponents perfectly, and fold the second nuts every single time your opponent held the nuts, it probably wouldn't affect your bottom line all that much. Of course, in practice, we can't read our opponents anywhere near perfectly. If you become a good enough player that you can occasionally read an opponent forhaving precisely the nuts, that's great - as you'll probably make a lot of money at this game. But you'll make a lot of money because you can apply your reading ability to thousands of other, more common situations. It won't be because you've magically learned just exactly when to make a huge fold.
2. Why would you want to fold the second nuts? Let's say that you have two kings preflop. The blinds are $25-$50, an early-position player raises to $150, you make it $450, and he reraises to $1,500. You both have $20,000 in starting chips (as is, happily, often the case in big tournaments today). If you make it $4,000 and your opponent moves in, you probably do have to fold your two kings, even though onlyone hand beats you. So then you should ask the question, "Why did I make it $4,000?" If you have a hand as good as two kings preflop, you should be trying to make as much money as you can from it. If you make it $4,000, it's likely that all hands worse than yours will fold. But it's a guarantee that you'll get action from better hands, since aces are the only better hand your opponent can have. Reraising to $4,000 is a lousy way to make money with pocket kings in this spot. You'd be better off calling, allowing worse hands to continue to bet into you, allowing yourself the chance to flop a set, and trusting your post-flop reading abilities later on. Play it this way and you never have to worry about folding the second nuts preflop! This argument works on the river, as well. If you have the second-nut flush and your opponent betsinto you, it's often correct to just call, especially if he's a tight player. Tight players will often fold weaker flushes to a raise on the end, but everyone is going to raise you right back with the nut flush. Many players who end up folding the second nuts often made a mistake earlier in the hand, by putting themselves in a situation in which they had to fold the second nuts.
3. Before you try folding the second nuts, try minimizing your losses with it. This is related to point No. 2, but it's worth restating in a slightly different form. I hear stories from players that they put in the fifth raise with middle set, only to have their opponents show them top set, and then they ask me how they could've gotten away from the hand. Well, it's going to take a vast change in playing style to go from reraising a hand so many times to folding it. If you're worried that you're losing too much money with good but non-nut hands, try playing them a little less aggressively than you're used to. For example, in the recent $10,000 buy-in event at Foxwoods, I flopped top set on a board of 8-6-3 rainbow. I had raised preflop and bet the flop, and my opponent raised. I called, and the turn brought a 9. I checked, my opponent bet, I raised, and my opponent reraised me all in. I called instantly. He had a set of nines. People told me, "You couldn't get away from thathand." Of course I couldn't get away from it, but maybe I could've avoided losing my stack. If I'd been reading my opponent superbly well, and trusting my read, I could've gone into passive mode once I read him for having a bigger set than mine. I could've check-called the turnand river if I'd been playing my best. I could never in a million years have folded my hand. Before you try "getting away" from the second nuts, work on losing less than the maximum with it. I'll bet that you'll find even that to be difficult.
4. Stop worrying about when to make big folds. Great poker players do not become great by making a lot of big laydowns. If they do, they do so by also learning hundreds of other skills that are at least equally important. If you're obsessed with trying to find a way to make big folds, I suggest writing a list of 10 other areas of your game that need improvement, and getting to work on them. If you do that, my guessis that you'll start making so much more money that you'll stop worrying about when to ditch your second-nut hands.
5. It's OK to have the worst hand once in a while. I once had a student who told me that he "always" had the best hand whenever he got involved in a showdown. I told him that was his problem. If you're going to play only when you're 100 percent certain that you have the best hand, you'll almost never gather enough chips to be a serious contender to win a tournament. I think a lot of people want to learn to fold the second nuts because they want to be players who never get their money in badly. Think of all the top no-limit hold'em players you know. I'll bet that you can think of many times they got their money in badly. Poker is about maximizing your winnings, and minimizing your losses through educated guesses. It's not about always knowing exactly when your hand is good and when it's not.
If you've ever wondered how to fold the second nuts, stop wondering and start working on the rest of your game. The "secret" to making big folds is to become a great poker player. Then, eventually, you'll know when to muck a big hand - and when to call with trash.
Matt Matros is the author of The Making of a Poker Player, which is available online at www.CardPlayer.com.
