Collecting a straight flush poker hand is a dream for amateur and professional players alike. Without a doubt, it’s the best poker hand of all, giving you the nut hands (or nuts) in almost all scenarios. Regular players may see this poker hand once or twice a year if the variance is with them, while some players will never make it throughout their entire careers. That doesn’t mean it will never happen to you, so be prepared. Keep reading to find out what this epic hand is all about, the odds of a straight flush appearing, and poker tips to get the most value from it in online poker.

Defining a Straight Flush Poker Hand

So what is a straight flush in poker? If you look at a chart of Texas hold’em poker hand rankings, you’ll find it in the second position from the top, under the mythical royal flush. This rare poker hand effectively combines two strong poker hands in one: a flush and a straight. A flush is a five-card hand in which all the cards are the same suit, but they don’t have to be in sequence. Conversely, the five cards in a straight must be in sequence, but they don’t have to be in the same suit. A straight flush contains five cards in the same suit and in sequence.

Flopping a straight or a flush is enough to put a player ahead in most poker hands, and it happens reasonably often. Expressed in numbers, a hand with four different possibilities to flop a straight (suited connectors 5-4 through jack-10) gives you a 1.3% chance of flopping a straight, or 76-to-1 odds against. If your hole cards are suited, your chance of flopping a flush is 0.8% or 118-to-1 against.

A straight flush poker hand, by contrast, is a special phenomenon. The odds of a straight flush appearing on the board if your hand has four ways of flopping it are 4999-1 against or a 0.02% probability.

What beats a straight flush in poker? Another straight flush with a stronger high card. For example, suited jack-10-9-8-7 will lose to suited queen-jack-10-9-8. If the top card is an ace, it’s called a royal flush, which is the best poker hand you can get.

How To Play a Straight Flush

If you’re playing Texas hold’em and find yourself holding five suited cards in sequence, you most likely have the nuts, and will beat every other hand at the table. The challenge is to get your opponents to pay you without scaring them off the table. You want to reel them in and get them committed to the pot so you can reveal your unbeatable hand at showdown. To achieve this, you need to think about your table image.

Say you were dealt two suited connectors (like the 4 and 5 of spades), and you and one other player called the preflop raiser. Now the flop is the 3, 6, and 7 of spades, and you realize that a miracle has occurred: your hand connects perfectly with the board. What you don’t want to do is give your hand away. After all, everybody can see the draw on the board. Betting high right now would contradict your conservative preflop play and directly signal that you are sitting with the nuts.

A better approach is to draw your opponents in with value bets that build the pot steadily without scaring the other players away. Ideally, one or more players will come along to see the turn and the river. If they do, you can increase the size of your bets as you get deeper into the hand to maximize your winnings.

Handle A Straight Flush With Care

There are 36 different ways to make a straight flush, and variance can affect them all. In some scenarios, you need to be careful. For instance, you could start the game with a pair of sixes. The flop comes 8-10 suited, giving you a backdoor draw to a straight flush poker hand. The turn delivers a 7, and then the river makes your hand with a 9, so you have 6-7-8-9-10 suited. Unfortunately, you only have the lower end of the straight. There’s always the chance that another player has the jack, so bet with caution.

Conversely, if your card was the 9, you’ll block your opponent’s draw so that you can bet with confidence. For the same reason, you can be more confident if you use both hole cards to make your hand, depending on where they appear in the sequence.

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