Poker: Hitting the Flop

It is so nice to open those eyes and see the flop smiling back at you. Hitting the flop, either with a strong draw or a made hand, really does make your poker flow that much more freely. 

So, what hands give you the greatest chance of hitting a flop hard?

In the broadest sense, you are looking for a hand that connects strongly with the flop, or gives you plenty of options to continue semi-bluffing on the turn and river. 

So, good examples in multi-way pots would be suited connectors like [6d] [5d], suited one-gapper [7s] [5s], any suited cards higher than eight such as [Ks] [9s] and pocket pairs such as [5d] [5s]; the suitedness of your cards allowing you to barrel on later streets.

Hands that do not hit the flop well are unsuited connectors and one or two-gappers.

It’s true that they do hit straights, straight draws, and gutshot straight draws, but the unsuitedness of the cards gives you relatively little semi-bluffing opportunities on later streets. In addition, you can be caught up with a top pair weak kicker syndrome, making it difficult to defend. 

Another type of hand that can get you into trouble when it hits the flop is an unsuited weak ace. 

Hands ranging between [Ax] [2x] and [Ax] [9x] are going to be extremely difficult to play, when you flop top pair and encounter resistance because you will often be dominated.

It is true that you will also hit two-pair and stack your opponent on occasion but when you hit trips do you really want to be getting it all-in on the flop with a weak kicker?

So, there are a few broad examples of the types of hands that can hit flops well and those that don’t. 

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