Which hands are profitable after the flop?

1. Introduction

By the time the community cards are dealt, you naturally want to know: What did I hit? Is it good? Is it bad? This article will show you some of the different combinations and possibilities.

In order to simplify things, we'll only mention the cards that you need for your tournament strategy. It would make no sense to show you every hand combination in order to cram your brain with unnecessary information. All unmentioned card combinations are either too poor or too expensive to play, which is against your motto: I protect my chips. Playing in tournaments requires a different strategy to playing poker for cash.

2. Which hands are profitable to play?

You already know most of the listed hands here from the beginner article about the evaluation of poker hands. We've only included two more kinds of hands which are specific forms of pairs, the top-pair and overpair.

• Top-pair

  A top-pair is a pair which consists of one of your starting cards and the highest community card. Not all top-pairs are profitable to play. You should have at least a queen as your second starting card. That is your kicker. If the kicker is too low, your hand is too weak. It should be a queen or better, thus a queen, king or ace.
• Overpair

  An overpair is pair that is already in your starting cards (pocket pair) and is higher than every community card. There is no higher top-pair possible.
• Two pair

  Actually, you only have a two pair when you build the first pair with your first starting card and one of the community cards and build the second pair with your second starting card and one of the community cards. In other words: If one of either pairs appears in the community cards (the board is paired), you can't count it towards a two pair.
• Three of a kind

  A Three of a kind is three cards of the same rank.
• Straight

  A straight is five cards of any suit in a consecutive order.
• Flush

  A flush is a hand with all five cards of the same suit. For example five cards of hearts are a heart-flush.
• Full house

  A Full House is three of a kind combined with a pair
• Four of a kind

  Well, a four of a kind is four cards that have the same rank.
• Straight flush

  A straight flush is a straight with suited cards, thus any consecutive five cards in the same suit.
• Royal flush

  A royal flush is a straight flush from Ace to Ten and is the very best hand in poker.

3. Conclusion

Now you know which hands are profitable to play in a tournament after the first community cards have been dealt. You've learned what a top-pair is: A pair which consists from one of your starting cards and the highest community card. You also know that top-pairs are only strong when combined with a good second card from your starting hand (kicker) like a queen, a king or an ace.

The next level are overpairs, thus pairs that are already in your hand and that are higher than every community card. It follows two pair, three of a kind, straight, and so on. Hence all the hands which you've already experienced in the article about the evaluation of poker hands.

Now you have the essential basic knowledge in order to plunge into the real articles about the tournament strategy. The first article Your strategy when having a lot of chips teaches you how to proceed with a chip stack of more than 24 times the amount of the big blinds.

LINKS

Related articles: How do you play a tournament? How your position has an effect on the strength of your cards Your strategy when having a lot of chips Your adjustment when the blinds increase A special move: Blindsteals A special move: Stealreraises Your strategy when the blinds get very big How do you go your way: The bankroll management Discussion forum: Here you can ask experts and discuss with other players about this topic Videos: SNG and tournament videos Live-Coaching: Sit and Go coachings

4. Appendix: Answers

Question 1: A top-pair is always a pair which consists of one of your starting cards and ...	c)		the highest community card.
Question 2: You have a pair of queens (QQ) in your starting cards. When is this an overpair?	a)		When there is no queen, no king and no ace in the community cards.
Question 3: Which hand is stronger?	b)		Overpair
Question 4: You have top-pair kings. There are also two queens on the board. Can you count the pair of queens towards your pair of kings, thus can you assume you hold two pairs?	a)		No