Women Play com

Poker Lingo: Distinguishing a Kicker from the Nuts

Poker lingo is quite remarkable. It goes around from telling hole cards apart like the big slick or sailboats to mucking cards, gut-shots and a whole lot more. If you're interested in learning how to play poker well, you're going to have to read on tips and tricks of the game. And in order to understand these materials, you've got to learn poker lingo. And two of the more frequently words are kicker and nuts. Now, a kicker and nuts are usually deciding factors to determine who wins a hand but their similarity ends there.

A kicker is used to describe the highest-valued single card in your poker hand that goes along with trips (three-of-a-kind), a pair, and two pairs. The kicker is used to determine the winner in case two or more players are tied with any of these hand ranks.

Let's say you're playing Texas hold'em and you're in a head to head situation. You've got a queen and a jack for hole cards and the table shows a jack, nine, seven, three, and two. Your opponent has a jack and a ten. You're both tied with a pair of jacks, who wins then? Your kicker is a queen and your opponent's kicker is a ten so you win the hand.

Nuts, on the other hand, are used to describe the best hand that could come up in a game. In other words, when you've got the nuts, you can't be beaten. This poker lingo is commonly used to describe hole cards that, when combined with board cards, make the best poker hand in that game. That's why you'll often hear it used to describe that hand like a nut flush or a nut straight.

Let's say board cards include a king of diamonds, a queen of spades, a ten of diamonds, a five of diamonds and two of clubs. Obviously, the best possible hand that can come up with that spread is a flush to ace of diamonds and every other possible combination is outdone. Simply put, the nuts are diamond hole cards, one of which must be an ace. And if you've got that, you've got a nut flush.

The kicker in poker lingo is that highest single card in your poker hand and it's used to determine the winner in case of a tie. The nuts, in contrast, make up the best possible hand based on the spread of board cards. So, if you're starting on reading helpful tips on how to win at poker, telling a kicker from the nuts is a beneficial start to your learning experience.